SPGB Snippets: The punishment of Christa Pike (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website 

October 3, 2026

A dark abyss of cruelty lies behind capitalism’s glitzy facade. Christa Pike spent 31 years on Death Row for murder while lawyers launched appeal after appeal. The trial jury were never told about Pike’s hideous childhood: ‘Pike was physically and sexually abused by several of her mother’s husbands and boyfriends, and raped several times, once when she was 11 and again aged 17. Later, it was discovered that she was repeatedly raped as a toddler by her grandmother’s boyfriend.’

Unmoved, Tennessee’s governor, and the Supreme Court, refused to stop the execution. But the lethal injections failed, leaving Pike with possible brain damage. Her endless punishment is just one story in a trail of broken lives left by a world obsessed with money, power and bloody revenge.

The Passing Show: The pace-makers (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pace-makers

The present uproar among those employed in the “public sector”—nurses, teachers, civil servants, and so on—at the fact that they are the chief sufferers from the Government’s pay policy, is particularly interesting to those who remember what the Labour Party and reformers generally used to say on this subject. It was once a settled belief among left-wingers that any industry or service run by the State or by a municipality would give its workers better conditions than any similar private industry or service, and that private employers would have to improve the wages and conditions they offered in order to keep their workers. So that the nationalisation of an industry would not only benefit the workers in that industry: it would benefit those in other industries as well. See, for example, Bernard Shaw in The Transition to Social Democracy, reprinted in his Essays in Fabian Socialism:

“At the very outset of the new extension of municipal industries, the question of wage will arise. A minimum wage must be fixed . . . The worst sort of sweaters will find that if they are to keep their ‘hands’, they must treat them at least as well as the municipality.”

And so forth. When these arguments were fashionable, Socialists were pointing out that since the State, and the municipalities, and the State boards, were and could only be committees representing the general interests of the capitalist class, it was useless to hope that they would give any “better wages and conditions than individual capitalists. And judging by the recent agitation among “public sector ” employees, it seems that not only are those employed by the State and its agencies no better treated than similar workers in private employ—they are actually falling behind in wages and conditions.

But no doubt the nationalizers will still be trotting out their “better wages” arguments for years to come.

Strike in Saskatchewan

When we say that all workers by hand or brain have fundamentally the same interests, we are told that white-collar and professional workers are somehow quite different from manual workers— for example, doctors and the rest would never strike. This theory was never in accord with the facts—doctors and nurses have gone on strike more than once in Continental countries in recent years, and they threatened to strike, and nearly did strike, in this country on the introduction of the National Health Service. Now, of course, the theory has been swept away finally by the events in Saskatchewan. There the great majority of doctors have gone on strike against the Government’s attempt to introduce a medical service having some points in common with the British system. What matters here is not whether one sympathizes with this particular strike (we emphatically do not), but the simple fact that the strike has happened and has continued several weeks. Doctors, in fact, are workers just like the rest of us. In their struggles over conditions of employment they can and do use such working-class weapons as strike action even, as in this case, for the wrong reasons.

Cruel and violent

As a judge recently sentenced a man of twenty to five years’ imprisonment, and other youths to shorter terms, for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, he is reported to have said: “The iron bars and bottles and other weapons with which some of you were armed show how cruel and violent human beings can become.”

Well, well. There is news for the judge.

Human beings can become even more cruel and violent than that.

An iron bar can kill a man. A high-explosive bomb can kill a thousand. An atom bomb can kill a hundred thousand. And the latest H-bombs, we are told, can kill several millions.

But for these large-scale killings, no one is put in the dock. Violence is only deplored when it is not in the interests of the ruling class.

Yet if five years’ jail is the fit sentence for injuring one or two other men, what sentence can the workers pass on the capitalist system?

The only possible sentence is total abolition.

Top people

A new book Anatomy of Britain, by Anthony Sampson, gives several indications of the wealth of Britain’s upper class. On the distribution of wealth, he says :

“One recent survey has thrown light on capital wealth. Lydall and Tipping, writing in the Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Statistics in 1961, estimated that the top one per cent of British adults owned 43 per cent of total net capital—whereas in America (in 1954) the top one per cent owned only 24 per cent of personal wealth. The authors estimated that 20,000 people owned more than £100,000, and that their average holding was £250,000. (While at the bottom there are 16 million people with less than £100 each, and an average of £50.)”

Mr. Sampson quotes the Ministry of Labour, I960, figures that 30,000 men and 275,000 women are in private domestic service, among whom (according to one domestic agency) there are 600 butlers. He goes on to quote an estimate of “the cost of service in a well-appointed household”:

Butler:                                       £500

Two footman at £350:               £700

Odd man:                                  £250

Head housemaid:                      £300

Two housemaids at £250:         £500

Cook:                                        £400

Kitchenmaid:                            £250

Lady’s maid:                             £300

Chauffeur (non-resident):         £650

Three daily helps at £150:        £450 

Total:                                      £4,300

Keep (residents only):           £2,000

Total:                                      £6,300

If only someone would mention these figures to the Labour Party leaders, they might stop talking about the “social revolution” they are supposed to have put through after the war.

Alwyn Edgar

The affairs of the criminal. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Press has given no little attention to the Government’s changes in the methods of handling released convicts. Has the Socialist anything to say on the matter ? Yes. He, like the rest of the workers, is called upon to support the administration that thus deals with the suppression of “crime” and “criminals,” and, since he would influence the workers in another direction, he must give reasons why he refuses to support that which, for him, is a detail of capitalist defence. The occasion, then, calls for some discussion of the new arrangements and, necessarily, as the Socialist view is quite distinct from, and in violent contrast with, every other view, a general statement of the nature of “crime” and “criminals.”

To-day men speak of actions as criminal which are commonly held to be very immoral—actions in violation of the law of the land, or of what is considered to be correct living. But in the narrow sense those are criminals whose actions bring them within the cognizance of the Law of the day, and render them liable to imprisonment or death.

It is useful to point out in the first place the important fact that there is nothing fixed or absolute in “crime.” Actions that are “criminal” at one time or in one country, are not so at another time or in another country, In Borneo and New Guinea, to this day among the natives, man-eating is quite correct, while in most other lands it is criminal. To-day, in England, someone sticks a knife into a fellow human and gets hunged for it, while another pushes his knife, on the end of a Lee Enfield, into a man whom he never saw before, and is a “hero.” Often in the past the usurer and he who “cornered” stuffs was hoist on the gallows or imprisoned, but now such a person has but to succeed to be acknowledged a smart fellow, worthy of every honour. One might continue indefinitely to multiply examples showing the changes in men’s attitude towards certain conduct, but it is more interesting to enquire why these changes take place.

Take our examples. Those who have studied savage life tell in that behind custom aud ritual cannibalism has its roots in famine—in human necessity. And men “make virtue of necessity.” With peoples in a higher stage of development, the necessity has passed away, and with that the virtue. Here “order” of a different kind is required ; industry must proceed with a minimum of waste and disturbance, and the stranger within the camp may be more useful to the ruling interest alive than dead ; human sympathy comes through in queer ways, for man who may starve one another may no longer eat one another.

Likewise your fellow with the knife—he has become a general nuisance. The rich have other tools, and no longer have need of the bravo ; there’s no virtue in him, and he is suspended. The soldier, on the other hand, is a handy fellow. In orderly fashion he will proceed to wipe out the inconvenient Kaffir or the troublesome workman. The more he kills the finer fellow he is.

Clearly here the change of attitude is due to the change of interests—interests, of course, of men in a position to enforce their desires—ruling interests. Such are only the common interest or that of the great, majority, while society is in its primitive stages. But since classes evolved, men have been branded as criminal and punished for actions that conflict with the class-interest dominant at the moment.

Unlike the Christian and capitalist hack, the Socialist may not approach this question through the mysteries of God given conscience, and the assumed absolute “right” and “wrong,” but must view it from the basis of human experience. He perceives that crime is a question of circumstances, pre-eminent among which is class-interest. Class-interest decides that the satisfaction of men’s hunger by taking and eating bread is in certain circumstances criminal. The principle of property—the basis of class rule—may not be violated with impunity. The punishment for man-slaying in certain circumstances will be found to be ultimately on the same basis of class-interest, just as sanitation was undertaken when the gay clothing made in fever-infested slums wan found to kill aristocrats.

Criminality, then, depends upon circumstances, and your criminal is a victim of such.

Let men but consider the criminal’s case and ask how came he in such a position. They will find that such are made of very much the same flesh and blood as themselves, that while unasked-for inherited characteristics count for something, it is essentially the difference of circumstances, of child-training, companionship, opportunity, and requirements, that accounts for the difference between the criminal and the man in the street.

Our opponents are fond of bragging of the “individual” who makes his mark and imposes his will upon the world, as though he were some Olympic deity. But the slightest examination of the individual’s career will show that he is but a fly upon the wheel, and makes little difference. Rather than he imposing his will upon the world he will be found to derive that will, in its specific form, from the world about him, the social organisation or system of which he is but an atom. That system to-day is one wherein the means of livelihood, of joyous and comfortable existence, are greedily monopolised by a small class—the ruling, capitalist class. The great bulk of mankind are kept poor and hungry and anxious and miserable, and as such are treated with contempt until, taking instruction from the masters, they come to hold one another in disdain. When some seek to satisfy their needs—seek to get out of their wretched position—in ways inconvenient to the ruling class, the latter, with its instrument the machinery of State to hand, lands them in gaol.

Latterly the ruling class has taken to improving its prison arrangements—all in the interest of the prisoners, of course. Some of the revelations of police persecution and “criminal”-breeding under the “ticket-of-leave” system have made somewhat of a scandal, while the more up-to-date and cheaper prison-elevator schemes of the Salvation Army and other bodies seem to offer a better way.

The latest scheme is to hand the supervision of released convicts over to a new organisation composed of the Salvation Army, the Church Army, and other bodies concerned to clear the streets of the human wreckage produced by capitalism.

Here is no real improvement on the old conditions, for these organisations can only do as in the past, namely, force the men to work for next to nothing and destroy outside firms, as in the notorious case of the firewood industry. It means that badly paid workers will be discharged and replaced by worse paid ones. Others will go to gaol instead of these—that is your reform.

The Socialist cannot stand for any such hollow sham, and must needs denounce it. He knows that while the criminal withholders of the people’s bread are allowed to keep on the even tenor of their way, and millionaires are produced at one end of the social scale, gaols will be filled at the other. He knows that millions of sons and daughters of men shall rot aud die in the brothels and gaols, secular aud religious and industrial, of capitalism ere it shall be ended. Let Tories and Liberals and Labour men continue their shams and futilities. For us the cleansing touch of Revolution !

H. B.

Letter: Crime Passionel (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crime Passionel

Ref. the January issue of the Socialist Standard and the article “The Real World Outside”.

The writer of the article says, quote: “Socialist society will have no more need of prisons, than it will have of bombs”. Whilst agreeing with this statement, and the fact that 90-odd per cent of imprisonments are inflicted on people for theft, or for acts committed in the pursuance of them, which would not happen in a Socialist Society.

In a Socialist society however, some misdemeanours will still occur. How are these to be dealt with?

For one example, crime passionel, i.e.: A man desires a woman, but the woman rejects the man’s advances, preferring to live with another man, and not at all interested in the rejected one at all. In blind jealousy, the rejected man inflicts bodily harm, possibly death on the favoured one, or on the woman herself, or on both. Would nothing be done by society in a case like this? Would it be treated purely as a personal affair between the parties involved?

Regarding the criminally insane. Severely mentally disturbed people of a violent nature, would still have to be locked away, in a prison of one sort or another. No doubt with better conditions and facilities than at present, but a prison nevertheless.

J. Cardin

Merseyside.

Reply

J. Cardin raises so many interesting points that we would need a whole issue of the Socialist Standard to deal with them fully. Within the space available, we can only say this: the example of “crime passionel” is dangerously loaded with the prejudices of capitalist society. For example, you assume it is a man (not a woman) who is blindly jealous. Why? Can we suggest it is because so much of the advertizing etc. we see round us, shows woman as part of the complete man, instead of a full human being in her own right? This “blind jealousy” you talk of is usually the result of the conditioning of a perverse environment, where man assumes property rights over “his woman”. And “blind jealousy” is a phrase leaving so many questions unanswered. Why do people go off their rockers? May we suggest that one of the fundamental causes must be life under capitalism with all its stresses, and distorted values.

Why assume that the rejected one would “inflict bodily harm” on the former lover and his or her new lover? If you love someone, you don’t inflict harm on that person, or on the object of his or her affection. And if you don’t love, will you care enough to inflict harm? It is only property society which overloads basic human emotions with absurd and dangerous complications, causing absurd and dangerous reactions.

You do contradict yourself! You agree with our point that Socialist society will not need prisons in your second sentence, and then in your last sentence assume there will be prisons in Socialist society. Let us solve the riddle. There will be no prisons in Socialist society. If people commit violent acts upon their fellows it is almost certain they are mentally ill. If people are mentally sick (“criminally insane” is a brutal expression of property society) they will receive the same attention as the physically sick that is the best treatment possible.

Finally may we refer J. Cardin to the September 1974 Socialist Standard where some of these points are dealt with at more length in the article “Law and Society.”

Editors.

Act in the Court: Dipti in the dock (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Standing there, just able to see above the top rail of the dock, Dipti did not look like a threat to the very fabric of civilised society. For one thing people who threaten civilisation are supposed to be reckless, defiant, composed. But Dipti was trembling and had desperate tears in her voice. And while she stood there civilisation, unthreatened, carried on outside the court. The list of cases for that day noted that she was charged with False Representation – between this date and that date, against the Benefits Agency, resulting in her being “overpaid” well over ten thousand pounds. In plain words – Daily Mail-speak – she was a Social Security fraudster, a benefits scrounger, a leech sucking the blood of the welfare state – a threat to civilised society.

Cases like this are prosecuted separately from the run-of-the-mill criminal charges, which are handled by the Crown Prosecution Service. Instead the Benefits Agency have their own lawyer to put to the court the details of the offences. The facts were, said the lawyer, that Dipti had applied for Income Support, stating that she had no other income. She had been sent a book of vouchers to cash each fortnight and on each of them she had signified that there had been no changes in her circumstances such as to affect her entitlement to benefit. But for some months she had been working as well. Nobody in court pointed out that the word “working” was hardly the right way to describe her experiences: “low paid, stressful drudgery” would have been more appropriate.

It was just another episode (although this was something the lawyer did not say) in a miserable life. Her parents were too poor to care for her properly and sent her to live with an aunt in England, in the hope that she would do better in another country. And so it turned out for a while, until both the parents died and her aunt, who she regarded as her mother, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Alone and vulnerable, she was married when she was 18 and had three children. It was not the happiest of unions as her husband was an alcoholic who never had any silly ideas about supporting his children financially, which left Dipti to struggle on as best she could, doing whatever odd job was available, scraping a living for her family. It came as a relief when the husband left the home for good and when he had been gone long enough Dipti was able to get a divorce.

It would have been surprising if the children had come through this emotionally intact. And they didn’t: they behaved as might be expected of children whose short lives had been distorted by insecurity, violence and the stresses to be found in the deeper levels of poverty. They were, all three of them, incapable of coping with what is called – by courts, government agencies, the media – “normal” life. A psychiatrist, trained to brace people’s expectations of society to accept and tolerate the unacceptable and intolerable, would have interviewed each of them and written learned notes to the effect that they were “disturbed”. It is not their job, or within the scope of their training, to assess how “disturbed” is capitalist society; that might bring them to the conclusion that the people who react against the inhuman pressures of that society are sometimes healthier emotionally than those who are at ease with it.

In any case Dipti was too busy to bother about psychiatrists and their theories. She had found a job which suited her, allowing her to work irregular hours which could be fitted around the needs of her children – who were in their teens by then. It did not need any qualifications – she had problems with reading and writing – and provided periodical training. There were however two main snags. One was that it was demanding work and the other was that the wages were very low. It was agency work, as a care assistant, which meant Dipti had to visit people to do basic things which they could not do for themselves. From day to day she did not know where or when she would be asked to work; the agency would telephone her with the jobs on hand for that day. In fact she did get a lot of offers of work from the agency, because she had some huge debts and so was always eager to earn the extra money and she was always reliable and helpful.

There was a third snag. She did not tell the Benefits Agency about her job but carried on claiming Income Support, signing those vouchers to say nothing had changed for her. If she was ever bothered about this she told herself that after all each wage slip showed a reduction for Income Tax and in any case her husband had never paid anything towards the children’s’ upkeep. Did this not entitle her to some money from the state? But agency work is a field well-patrolled by the fraud seekers of the Benefits Agency and eventually they uncovered what Dipti had been up to. When they approached her she did not try to hide anything, although she was shocked when they told her how much she had been illegally paid. Her shock was not lessened when they also told her – a bit late in the day, some may think – that her wages had been low enough to qualify her for Family Credit, which over the period would have been worth some thousands of pounds – about a quarter of the amount she had overclaimed.

The lawyers briefed by the Benefits Agency do not as a rule prosecute with the same zeal as the Crown Prosecution Service. In cases of benefits fraud the facts are usually put to the court in the round, including some details which may make things easier for the person in the dock. So in that sense Dipti was not treated as harshly as she might have been – certainly not as she had feared. But of course the chairman of the bench had heard it all before, many times and he had come to the conclusion that the country was being overrun – and overturned – by people who were getting something for nothing – claiming state benefit which they were not legally entitled to. There is, he informed Dipti, too much of this going on. He had probably familiarised himself with the official estimate that social security fraud costs between £2bn and £4bn a year – and was too shocked to notice that the evidence to support those figures was so weak. It had got to stop. He stopped short of saying that he could do this all by himself. Instead he told Dipti she could well go to prison for this – all options were open. She would have to come back in a few weeks, after further enquiries had been made, when sentence would be passed. Meanwhile she could leave the court and civilisation, with its minority class getting a great deal for nothing through their exploitation of people like Dipti, could go on. Outside the court she grabbed her mobile phone and got on to the agency, asking what work they had for her for what was left of that day.

Ivan

The Passing Show: The Congo (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Congo

U.N. officials report that 300,000 people are slowly starving to death in the Congo, with two hundred dying every day. This is still further proof, if it were necessary, that it is not enough to be merely against capitalism, or colonialism, or the rule of a particular imperial power; one must have constructive proposals as to what is to replace the system to be destroyed—one must, in short, work for the achievement of Socialism, not merely for the destruction of any other economic and social system. A year ago, there were those who criticised the Socialist Party because it would not join in movements for “colonial freedom”, such as the one that aimed to throw the Belgians out of the Congo. We pointed out that this would only entail the Congolese people exchanging one set of masters for another. And this is what has occurred. It would be hard to argue, in face of the mass-starvation, in face of the pictures of Congolese children who are nothing more than skin and bone, that the Congolese people are better off today than they were a year ago. In fact the new Congolese masters, to whom the Congolese people were exhorted to give their support, cannot even agree among themselves. And in the squabbling and fighting among the various sections of the new Congolese ruling class—each of which calls in help from foreign states, Russia, America, Ghana, and Belgium among them—it is the ordinary Congolese who suffer. The system of food-growing and food-distribution has in some parts (notably Kasai) almost entirely broken down. And every day more people starve.

Land of opportunity

Feeling depressed in a monotonous job? Worried about the endless struggle to keep the weekly budget down to the size of your pay packet? Thinking about emigration—perhaps to Canada, land of opportunity?

Before you go, have a look at MacLean’s magazine (it calls itself Canada’s National Magazine) for November 19th, 1960. It carries an article telling you about Canada’s rich. A favourite place for their holidays is Frenchman’s Creek in Jamaica, where millionaires and their wives can have peace and privacy for two thousand dollars a week. Last year a Calgary oil millionaire flew a party of his friends to England to watch his horse run in the Derby; the bill he paid covered a week’s stay at the Ritz for the party and Rolls-Royces for his friends’ trips. A Toronto manufacturer had two swimming pools put in his backyard, complete with lighted fountain, hi-fi music and Japanese teahouse, for 30,000 dollars. A Montreal construction business tycoon often flies to Florida or the Caribbean for weekends in one of the family’s two private planes (a DC-3 and a flying boat); once he couldn’t get a favourite Chinese dish in Miami, so he rang up his usual restaurant in Montreal and got them to make it and fly it down to him. A multi-millionaire distiller had his house festooned with fifteen thousand lilac blooms for his daughter’s wedding; the total wedding bill was reported at 100,000 dollars. Twenty-five upper class wives dress entirely in Paris and London creations at an annual cost of up to forty thousand dollars.

The other side of the coin

You’re keen to? Have a look at the next page. This carries the stories of some of the families of Canada’s 327,000 unemployed workers. (If we had the same percentage of unemployment in Britain there would be nearly a million out of work.) It tells of the bitterness of men trying to make ends meet on unemployment pay. “Today the boss wants a twenty-year-old man with forty years’ experience”, some of them said. A fifty-three-year-old steamfitter suggested, “Why don’t they shoot us old men? Digging graves for us would make jobs for the younger men”. The stories are much the same—mounting bills which cannot be paid, threatening letters from hire-purchase companies as the payments fall behind, the despair of men combing the town every day for jobs and being everywhere refused.

Still, there it is. In a system run by the capitalists you would expect the capitalists to be well off. And you would expect the workers to be badly off. In other words—capitalism in Canada works out much the same as capitalism in Britain. Emigration will give you a change of scenery, but it can’t change your class-position in society.

Unfair to the rich

In the current number of Oxford Tory, the Conservative undergraduate journal, there was a surprising item. One writer commented “To say that we have a just society would be, to say the least, an exaggeration”. Clearly a true statement, but what a place to find it. However, the very next words dispelled the astonishment. “Look”, the writer goes on, “at Schedule A, and the absurd level of death duties”. So it isn’t the ownership of all the country’s factories, and mines, and land by a small ruling class that this Tory finds “unjust”, nor the fact that the workers have to labour to support idlers in luxury: he was only concerned with the arrangements made by the capitalist class to pay for the State which looks after their interests. Perhaps if he examines the nature of society a little more closely, he will be able to find some more penetrating criticisms of the “just society”.

Flogging

Sir Thomas Moore, the Conservative M.P. for Ayr Burghs, is again agitating for the introduction of flogging for crimes involving violence. Sir Thomas said that “peace and justice” were the “keywords” of Hitler’s policy, and also that “Herr Hitler is absolutely honest and sincere,” at a time when Hitler had already set up a dictatorship and begun his campaign to “solve the Jewish problem” with every circumstance of brutality. Socialists do not join in the debate about how criminals should be punished: we go to the root of the problem, By attempting to end the society which gives rise to crime and to criminals. But if Sir Thomas thinks that a man who injures a single other man ought to be flogged, what does he think should be done with political leaders who support dictators whose declared policy is the “liquidation” of millions of their fellow human beings?

Alwyn Edgar

Blogger's Note:

"A year ago, there were those who criticised the Socialist Party because it would not join in movements for “colonial freedom”, such as the one that aimed to throw the Belgians out of the Congo. "

This is in reference to the 'Hackney 13' who resigned from the SPGB in 1960. Hackney is in reference to the fact that they were members of the Hackney Branch of the SPGB. From 'Kaz's paper on SPGB disputes down the years:

The Hackney thirteen, 1960 (13)

Thirteen members of Hackney appended their names to a circular, dated 25th May 1960, announcing their resignation. The letter noted that those listed were “deeply concerned about racialism, about South Africa, about the hydrogen bomb, living standards and other things” and that the resignations were a protest against what they saw as the “unconcern” of the Party with these issues and its “refusal to consider…the welfare of the working class.” 

Connolly, Leo (5929)

Coster, Mrs M (5075)*

Crome, Jack (5735)

Dane, S (5551)

Gleason, J (5856)

Ivimey, AW (5572)

Ivimey, F (5573)

Jarvis, R (5885)

Lawrence, JW (5835)

Temple, MF (5008)

Walby, Dennis (5906)

Walby, S (5292)

Wood, AH (4724)

One name missing from that list was Robert Barltrop ('R. Coster'), who was part of the same dispute within the Party, and resigned from its ranks around about the same time.

The Passing Show: The fruits of leisure (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fruits of leisure

There was an interesting interview with Professor J. D. Bernal in the last issue of the Sunday Empire News before it joined the ranks of those fallen in the newspaper war. “Properly developed and properly utilised, the world can amply support its people”, said the Professor. There could be an “abundant” society, with working time reduced to four hours a day, three days u week. The Professor went on :

“There would have to be a change in culture. People will be educated, fully or part-time, up to the age of 30. Probably they will retire at 45. If they wanted, they could take months or even years off work.

In fact, people who didn’t want to wouldn’t necessarily have to work. Five per cent of the population could produce all the food that was needed for the rest, and another 10 per cent could produce all the goods that were necessary.

They could explore all the fruits of leisure, the arts, the crafts, music and painting. In space exploration there would be all the adventure for the people who wanted adventure. And equal scope to grow roses or something for the people who did not want adventure.”

Professor Bernal was simply giving facts which support our contention that the productivity powers developed within capitalism have now reached the stage when an abundant non-coercive society is possible—what we call Socialism. Unfortunately, however, instead of devoting his efforts to work for this new society, Professor Bernal continues to give his support to the Communist Party and the Eastern bloc—which are dedicated to state capitalism. Some of those supporting state capitalism may do so partly because they do not realise that a Socialist society is possible. Professor Bernal, though, clearly has not got this excuse.

Property

Jesus is reported to have told one man who wanted to join his band of disciples “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor” (Luke, 18, 22). However, it would be unwise to assume that those who claim to be Christians have got any great desire to follow this advice, as one old woman found out recently. A widow of 71, she “was sentenced to seven years’ preventive detention at London Sessions . . . for stealing two brass ornaments from St. John’s Church, Islington. It was stated that she had 16 previous convictions, nine for stealing ornaments from churches” (The Guardian, 12/11/60). This unfortunate perhaps doesn’t realise that whatever the Bible may say, in a capitalist society the Christian churches hang on to their property as tightly as, if not more tightly than, anyone else.

In sentencing the woman, the Chairman of the Sessions remarked: “You have lived a drab life. I suppose you have no ambition except to go back to prison and indeed I am told you would prefer to go there as you have no home outside. It is probably the best place for you.” If this is true, it means that one of our fellow members of the working class prefers the inhumanities of jail to the joys of the “free” life outside it. This will take some explaining away by the advocates of our supposedly “never had it so good” society.

Substantial number

Sir Roy Welensky, the Rhodesian Federal Prime Minister, recently defended the present Rhodesian set-up in the Federal Parliament. As part of a list of advances towards “multi-racialism” which he claimed had been made, he said “In private life there are already a few African professional men operating under European conditions in cities and there is a substantial number of successful African businessmen.” But Sir Roy was wide of the mark in giving this as a reason why the existing settlers’ government should be left in undisturbed control of Rhodesia. The “substantial number of African businessmen”, the developing African capitalist class, is in fact the main reason why the days of the settlers’ government are numbered. A government based on landed interests can hold on for a certain time in certain conditions when capitalism is expanding in a country. It may lean over backwards, as it thinks, in its efforts to be fair to the growing capitalist class. But when a country’s capitalist class comes to maturity, then nothing will content it but the full control of political as well as economic power. Welensky and his settlers, in fact, as the rulers of Rhodesia are doomed.

Alwyn Edgar

Juvenile Delinquency (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is well-known that over a very large number of years the figures for Juvenile Delinquency have been constantly rising until, in recent years, they have reached such proportions as to constitute a formidable problem to the Capitalist State.

During the war years complete statistics were not available although what evidence there was showed a sharp increase. More figures, however, are now becoming available.

The “Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for the year 1946” emphasises the seriousness with which the problem is regarded.

The Report (p.38) states “Statistics in age groups of the population within the Metropolitan Police District are not available to facilitate deductions as to the growth of crime among children but comparisons of the number of children arrested in 1946 with the figures for those of similar ages arrested in 1945 and 1938 make it only too clear that juvenile crime is increasing among the very young,” and later, “Nobody can fail to be impressed by the figures showing the large numbers of children up to 16 years old who are engaged in crime: the graphs of ages of persons arrested show very large peaks for these ages.”

The figures for juvenile crime approach very closely the figures for adult crime and the Report says of this (p.39) “Nearly half the arrests for burglary and housebreaking were of persons under 21 years of age and 25 per cent. were persons of not more than 16 years old. As regards shopbreaking, the position was even more deplorable. Two-thirds of the persons arrested were under 21 and 30 per cent, were schoolchildren.” The Daily Telegraph, commenting on this Report, says (11/7/47) “The distressing evidence of a fresh growth of juvenile criminality indicates that crime has no difficulty in enlisting thousands of new recruits each year.”

The figures given refer to the Metropolitan Police District only and it is interesting to note that in the Home Office Circular 807624 (1941), the proportion for the total indictable offences, in 1938, is given as: “committed by adults 21 years and over” 49 per cent., “committed by juveniles under 21 years ” 51 per cent. (36 per cent. of the whole total by those under 17 years of age). Many reports have been made on the subject and a large number of books written on it with, it would seem, every author advocating a different solution to the problem, ranging from the sadistic to the Utopian. More punishment, less punishment, corporal punishment, kindliness, State control of children, removal from environment, treatment by psychologists, punishment of parents, education of parents, more hostels, the abolition of slums—all these and more are the remedies of the reformist and humanitarian authors.

The overwhelming mass of delinquency is “crime” against property and, as the Capitalist system of society is based on the class ownership of the means and instruments of production and distribution, the ownership of private property and the inviolability of that ownership is, of necessity, the prime concern of the Capitalist class and of the State, which functions in the interests of that class. The full resources of law and jurisprudence are directed to the protection of the rights of property ownership and the monstrous machinery for the enforcement of those laws intrudes into, restricts and controls the life of every human being in contact with them.

So well is the conception of the inviolability of private property ownership absorbed into the ideas of society that it has become accepted as an absolute rule and its validity is rarely questioned. Therefore, the violation of these laws, even by children, results in the drastic and summary punishment of the offender.

Should private property ownership rights be violated it becomes of paramount importance to the property owning class to apprehend the violator and, having done so, to use the methods they consider best suited to prevent subsequent violation by that person and as a deterrent to potential violators. In past days society regarded juvenile law breaking as a symptom of inherited wickedness and children were imprisoned, transported or hanged, for their offences and until quite recently the most effective deterrent was considered to be severe punishment including imprisonment and birching. The ruling class have never been particular about the means used to gain their ends, but in the case of juvenile delinquency the results were disappointing to them.

In spite of the severity of punishment the delinquency always increased. Savage sentences neither reformed the delinquent nor served as a deterrent to others, and so the methods of dealing with the delir-qnent juvenile have gradually changed. Imprisonment and corporal punishment have largely given way to the approved or reformatory school where the young delinquents are “taught” rather than whipped.

Much is heard lately of the newest editions of these approved schools, known as rehabilitation centres. These modern institutions rely on a more scientific and psychological treatment of the young, dealing with them more from the angle of children who, because of various unfortunate circumstances, have strayed from the path of rectitude and can be reclaimed. Part of this psychological treatment is in kindlier and more tolerant usage and more freedom.

Reformists will claim that the changing law, the new institutions and the less harsh methods of dealing with the inmates are the results of long years of effort on the part of individuals and institutions interested in the reform of juvenile law and corrective establishments. Whilst it may be true that a large amount of data has been collected by such individuals and institutions on the behaviour and reaction of children to certain forms of treatment, and whilst some of this information may be utilized in these new establishments, it is much more true to say that the State has been forced into using new and somewhat experimental methods because of the failure of the old, and, if these have followed lines advocated by the reformists, it is not from any humanitarian motives but because such methods may offer a better chance of turning the potential criminals into what the State, on behalf of the ruling class want—docile and honest wage-slaves.

One point with regard to the modern corrective institution is invariably stressed—and it is a key to the insolubility of the,problem—that detention in it must be a deterrent to further delinquency and as such, must not be made too comfortable lest the children should prefer to be in it rather than go back to their homes and “live in conditions worse than those which would be tolerated in any place of detention and so find compensation in being punished.” (“Juvenile Delinquency and the Law,” p. 168, A. E. Jones.)

It is a moot point, however, whether the new methods reclaim or deter any greater number of juveniles from criminality than the old. What is certain is that both criminality and juvenile delinquency are increasing in spite of a more mobile and efficient police force using the most up-to-date methods and equipment.

Either method, old or new, of dealing with delinquency, must inevitably fail for the simple reason that neither are dealing with causes but both with effects—the effects of Capitalism and, like other effects of Capitalism, such as poverty, insecurity, ill-health, unemployment and war—the very social conditions that give rise to delinquency—there is no solution within the Capitalist system of society. Juvenile delinquency is the inevitable outcome of a system of society that is based on the class ownership of the means of living and which, as a consequence, determines that the vast majority of society shall be divorced from ownership and shall live in poverty and insecurity all their lives, exploited by a minority in order that they, the Capitalist class, shall have wealth, power and luxury. Juvenile delinquents are, almost entirely, working class children. Therefore poverty, whether absolute or relative, is the common denomination of delinquent juveniles, for from that poverty arise the immediate motives of the delinquency—insecurity, frustration, overcrowding, ill-health, ill-treatment, inhibitions and resentments arising from lack of opportunity for self-expression, feelings of inferiority engendered by their class position and “the perplexities, anxieties, frustrations and fatigue associated with employment, the bleakness of unemployment.” (“Child Welfare Outside the School,” p.201, Michael Kaye).

Whilst it is probable that all investigators into the problem of juvenile delinquency agree broadly upon the fact that the social conditions are the root cause of delinquency, they have no solution to the problem. A few reforms in the treatment of delinquents, a few modifications to the laws dealing with juveniles, a pious hope to mitigate poverty or abolish slums, a call for more opportunities and amenities for youth—these have no reality nor any relationship to the real problem.

Subjected to a Socialist analysis the problem is seen to be a manifestation of the social conditions of the time which, in themselves, constitute and produce crime.

The Socialist sees that the existing social conditions are the result of the class ownership of the means of life, that Capitalist relationships are property relationships, that goods are produced, not primarily for use, but for the purpose of making a profit. That the worker is robbed of the values he creates and gets back only sufficient to enable him to exist from week to week in poverty. That in a world of potential plenty the working class go in need always.

Whilst this system of society remains there will be juvenile, as well as adult, delinquency and crime, and no reforms will alter this. Rather, in spite of reforms, will delinquency increase ever further as the working-class position continues to deteriorate and the social conflicts and class antagonisms of Capitalism become yet more fierce as Capitalism becomes increasingly anti-social and decreasingly able to satisfy the needs of society.

Only the Socialist can offer the solution to this problem, which lies in the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism, for when the means of life are commonly owned, there will be no more exploitation of man by man and consequently no poverty, no slums and no overcrowding. No need to steal or lie, to cheat or go hungry, no need to prostitute either body or mind or be overburdened with the cares of the economic struggle for existence because there, will be ample of the means of life for all and each will have free access to them. That is the world that is possible for children if their parents want it, but if the parents fail them then the children become the next generation of wage slaves.

J. R. Hall

The Passing Show (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

If our civilisation perishes, as others have perished, and leaves behind very little in the way of written record, any future historian might still get a reasonably clear picture of our society by reading an account of the “towpath murder,” as it has come to be called, at Twickenham. He would read how four youths attacked one young man, whom none of them had ever seen before, and against whom they had no personal grudge, in order to rob him of any valuables he might have on him. He would read how when the victim was lying on the ground moaning, one of the assailants (in his own words) “kicked him twice on the head to keep him quiet.” The assailant made this statement in evidence, without apparently any admission that such behaviour was much out of the ordinary. The future historian would then read how the victim had died, and how the trial ended with sentences of hanging and imprisonment.

Violence

Anyone from a future era who read this would be horrified, and rightly so. What kind of society was this (he would ask himself) that bred such men? Anyone who supports our system of society might well ask himself the same question. For this brutality didn’t happen among the Hottentots of Africa; nor did it happen in an enemy country in time of war (if it had done, we should not have lacked people to tell us how terrible the nation must be where such a thing could occur); it happened right here, in this society, in this country in the suburbs of the capital, London. Can we be surprised? In our society the great god is the acquisition of wealth, and a minor god is its ostentatious spending, which assures us of the admiration of our fellows. Violence, which is required by our ruling class when it engages in war, is portrayed and glorified by the press, the cinema, the television. Anyone who refuses to engage in violence when his rulers demand it is shunned by society, sneered at, perhaps imprisoned. Inevitably the more impressionable natures come to look on violence as admirable, especially if it leads to that great end of our morality, the gaining of money. And so we have violent crime. Then society seeks a solution in hanging the individuals responsible. Society thinks it is hanging its own failures, but that it cannot do. To find a solution, society must re-organise itself on a civilised basis.

Republic

Dr. Verwoerd has won his majority for the creation of a South African Republic. True, he did it by restricting the right to vote to those whose faces were the correct shade of greyish-pink, and barring those whose skins had colours in the range from light brown to black. Even then he had to ensure his success by counting in the votes of the greyish-pink minority who live in South-West Africa (which is not part of the Union of South Africa at all). Nevertheless, he won. The landowning class, which has always been opposed to the connection with the British crown, has triumphed; and the capitalist class of South Africa has lost. How long will the South African capitalists endure this? Wherever they look in the world today, they see the capitalists ruling supreme. Everywhere they see the workers voting for the one capitalist party (in totalitarian states) or for one of two or more capitalist parties (in democratic states). Because of the race fears carefully fostered by the South African landowners, many South African workers must have given their votes to the landowners instead of to the capitalists. How greedily the capitalists must cast their eyes on the nine million voteless inhabitants of the Union! Surely, the capitalists reason, if these were enfranchised, most of them would vote for us. It must only be a question of time now before the South African capitalists, their power growing steadily as trade and industry grow, make their bid for political as well as economic power.

Retail Technicians

The Bridlington Chamber of Commerce doesn't like the sound of the words “shop hands” and “shop assistants.” It thinks other names should be substituted—“retail tacticians,” “sales staff,” or “ counter public relations officers.” We don’t put so much emphasis on names: we are concerned with realities. As workers, we don’t care what we are called. We believe it is time that society was no longer divided into two classes, capitalists and workers (whatever the latter may be named); it is time that we became simply, and fully, human beings.

Thanks to Him

The People (14/8/60) printed an article about the fraudulent claims which have been made by some advertisers in the United States. It quotes many examples from a book called The Operators, by Frank Gibney. The prize one is perhaps an advertisement offering shares in “the world's richest undrilled oil field.’’ It waxed lyrical: “Thanks to Him from Whom all the joyful things of the earth flow forth—a Divine Guidance without which this exceedingly great joy could not now be ours. . ." This line was a great success, and the money rolled in. The advertisers were a million dollars to the good-before it came out that this particular bit of Divine Guidance had only indicated a barren patch of land in Utah; so the law intervened.

Phoney Claims

No doubt it occurred to The People that this and similar advertisements quoted in the article would hardly encourage its readers to put much faith in its own adverts. Which, in turn, wouldn’t encourage its advertisers—and newspapers make their profit out of their advertisement revenue. Hence repeated assurances that this kind of thing couldn’t happen here:

British newspapers believe in protecting their readers against exploitation. The Advertising Association maintains an advertisement investigation department to ensure that any advertisement which makes phoney claims, exaggerates, tries to frighten you. or is in any way unethical, never reaches print. National newspapers like The People investigate every new advertiser thoroughly to make sure that his company is reputable and that his product can do all he claims of it.

Well, there it is in black and white. So all those soap powders and detergents that claim to wash cleaner than all the others, and all the petrols that say they have more power than all the others, and all the cigarettes which insist they are made of better tobacco than all the others—well, they are all correct. No “phoney claims’’ or “exaggerations” would ever be permitted—The People says so. Each manufacturing line is like a race, in which each competitor beats all the others.

Luck on Purchase

In view of The People's statements an advertisement appearing in its stable-mate, the Daily Herald, is particularly interesting. It offers a "Lucky Welsh Lady Key Ring" for 2s. 6d. It apparently consists of a simple metal key ring, plus a mascot attached to it. The advert states boldly "Luck on Purchase." Are we expected to believe that the Daily Herald has "investigated this advertiser thoroughly” to make sure that the “product can do all he claims of it ”? Or are The People's sweeping statements merely to make sure advertisers aren’t discouraged from paying for space in its columns?

Alwyn Edgar

Justice isn’t for us (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

We love watching cop shows where the rugged dick wins. The bad guy gets caught, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and law and order are secured for another day, again. The detective’s a heavy drinking, chain-smoking, emotionally wrecked mess, but somehow they get the bad guy. Usually some rich, powerful bastard who almost gets away with it, but justice wins in the final act. We get to feel good. Satisfied.

But that’s not how it works in real life. For the working class the justice system doesn’t exist to deliver truth or fairness. It’s a system: a system under capital, a system that serves capital. It protects property, not people. It punishes survival. It targets the working class, the dispossessed, the traumatised, those who’ve already been hurt by other material conditions this system throws at them.

The real bad guys: wife-beaters, rapists, the corrupt bosses, the violent cops, they often walk free. Or they don’t even get looked at.

The victims? They’re ignored, re-traumatised through the courts, blamed, left to pick up the pieces with no support.

Let’s have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: most ‘crime’ is shaped by class and trauma. People with Borderline Personality Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Complex PTSD, … people who’ve been through it are more likely to end up in front of a judge than behind a desk. And when the harm is personal – sexual assault, domestic abuse, assault, the eyes of the system glaze over. Victims are told to report online, just trust the police, wait for justice, hope the Crown Prosecution Service thinks its viable… but ‘justice’ almost never comes. And when the abuser is the police? Only then, when it’s inescapably public, when it’s, PC Wayne Couzens, murderer and rapist, enabled by his position as a police constable, does the system act. It feels more like it’s PR.

Scotland Yard recently declared violence against women and girls to be a national epidemic. Where was that energy before it became another Met. Police media scandal? Survivors have been shouting into the void for decades. Justice isn’t something you find in a courtroom, not under this system.

Movements like MeToo (the campaign against sexual abuse) show the cracks — how deep the rot goes. But even they hit a wall. Restorative justice circles gain popularity then vanish again or end up doing more harm than good because they are operated by the enthusiastic but unqualified. We need systemic change, but the structures we live under fight revolution in every way.

The system fails over and over: the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the Met’s decades-long cover-up; the brutal killing of Sarah Everard by a serving officer known as ‘The Rapist’ among the force. Survivors of rape still face a system where only one percent of reported cases lead to charges. The Grenfell fire exposed how working-class lives are treated as disposable, wrapped in flammable cladding and sacrificed for profit. The Hillsborough disaster showed how the state lies to protect itself while victims’ families are left to fight for truth alone. These aren’t one-offs — they’re symptoms of a system doing exactly what it was built to do: protect power, property, and profit.

So what does socialism offer? Not more punishment. Not longer sentences. Not more cops with better PR. Socialism means we stop asking a broken system to fix what it’s built to ignore. It means no one has to live in the material conditions that cause crime in the first instance: poverty, trauma, insecurity, isolation. It’s built so that people who’ve been harmed are actually cared for. And people who’ve done harm are made to take responsibility, not locked in a cage, but made to understand, repair, change.

Justice under capitalism tends to protect power and often reinforces it. We’ve seen enough to know the courts won’t save us. But we also know that we’re not powerless and can bring change. This starts when we stop pretending this system works and start building something better ourselves.

A.T.

Between the Lines: State Murder, USA (1992)

The Between the Lines Column from the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

State Murder, USA

In sixteenth-century Geneva a deranged character by the name of Jacques Chapellaz confessed to cursing God and trying to eat the devil, though finding it hard to swallow his horns. The poor man was condemned to having his tongue cut out. That was then: dark, ignorant, religiously confused times. Panorama (BBC1, 9.30 pm, 3 August) was about how the USA claims to be a rational society which has surpassed the excesses of Old Testament morality. The programme showed how false is such a claim. In the cells of Death Row in Huntsville, Texas there are 358 men who have been sentenced to be murdered by the state. That is just one of the waiting rooms for death in the 50 states of the USA. Amongst those awaiting the legalised murder which “justice" has condemned them to are several who are clearly so mentally deranged as to have little control over their actions. For example, one condemned prisoner was interviewed who was described by a psychologist as having a mental age of ten and as compulsively agreeing with whatever is asked of him in order to please people. Obtaining a confession of murder from such a pathetic person was hardly difficult.

A new and highly conspicuous pressure group is called VOCAL: Victims of Crime and Leniency, comprising people who want courts to sentence more "wrongdoers" to death. Many of these advocates of callous vengeance were themselves bereaved as a result of murder. They have become bitter and irrational. But now they have won the right for victims' families to testify in courts in order to explain to juries how only an eye for an eye will satisfy them. The unreasonableness of expecting just responses to emanate from angry, vengeful relatives of those who have been murdered is obvious; their inclusion into the US “justice" system is proof that the objective of criminal punishment is largely revenge.

The reverse side of this thirst for revenge in the form of dead bodies, which turns “justice" into organised murder to show the murderers the validity of violence as the highest ethic, is fear. The reason for disgusting pressure groups like VOCAL, made up of wretched, hurt workers, is that they live in a society where almost everyone is scared. The victims are afraid, and their relatives are afraid that the criminals will be punished too little, and the criminals are made afraid by the threat of state murder. What way of running a society is such mutual fear? How dare the US leaders preach of new world orders and civilised values and human rights. In a socialist society, where anti-social behaviour will no longer be stimulated by the relationships of property, we shall not seek to solve problems (and problems there surely will be) by threats, either of confinement or murder.

The members of of VOCAL shown on Panorama would do well to read William Morris's News From Nowhere wherein Old Hammond, speaking from the vantage of a moneyless, propertyless, stateless socialist society, explains how the response to anti-social acts has changed:

'The punishment of which men used to talk wisely and act so foolishly, what was it hut the expression of their fear, since they - i.e. the rulers of society - were dwelling like an armed band in a hostile country. But we who live amongst our friends need neither fear nor punish. Surely if we, in dread of an occasional rare homicide, an occasional rough blow, were solemnly and legally to commit homicide and violence, we would only be a society of ferocious cowards."

In the USA today 80 per cent of people polled favour state murder; a decade ago less than half did. More fear, more cowardly revenge and more prisoners condemned to lives waiting for execution. Surely there is a wiser course for humanity.

Who is the savage?

Early Travellers in North America (BBC2, 9.10pm, 6 August) presented a series of accounts from nineteenth-century travellers who encountered the North American Indians. European orthodoxy at the time was that these people were savages, racially sub-human. In fact, visitors such as Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope and Robert Louis Stevenson were impressed by the dignity of the co-operative native Americans and horrified by the way in which they were cast into prison-like reservations and often killed. Coming only a few days after the Panorama documentary two points emerged forcefully: Firstly, there were no eases of native American Indian Death Rows; secondly, how many of the current "justice" officials owe their power to those before them whose prestige and wealth was obtained by organising the violent attacks upon and killings of defenceless Indians? If justice was about revenge - and both are terms from the vocabulary of capitalism - might not some of the great capitalist families of the Land of the Free be rotting in death cells instead of hopeless wage slaves, many of whom will be killed for crimes that they did not even commit but lack the money or the wit to prove their innocence?

Steve Coleman

Crime marches on (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

To flog, or not to flog? That is the question which the daily press recently thrust upon its readers as the burning issue of the day, and which it discussed at great length with much emotion and, in some instances, precious little consideration for the facts; probably with no other result than to make the public—including the potential delinquent—cosh conscious. That violence is a serious problem for which a solution is long overdue, few would deny; but is flogging the answer? Let us quieten the hysteria for a moment and, like all good scientists, take a look at the facts.

The first and most obvious fact which should come to mind is that until September 1948 flogging was used to deal with various types of violence. This was provided for by a number of Acts such as the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 as amended by the Garroters Act of 1863, so it cannot be said that flogging has not been given a fair trial. In spite of this however, violence is not only still with us, but since 1938 has increased rapidly. The number of robberies with violence increasing from 287 in that year to 1,101 in 1948 (News Chronicle 24/3/50). After flogging was abolished however, the number of cases decreased from 711 during the first nine months of 1948 to 597 in the corresponding period of 1949 (Daily Mirror 17/3/50). Conversely, during the six years that followed the introduction of the Garroters Act, viz. 1863 to 1869 there was, to quote Lord Aberdare who was at the time Under Secretary at the Home Department, “ a slight increase in these crimes.” (See “The Lawbreaker” by E. R. and T. Calvert, Routledge, 1933, p. 241). Another interesting example was the introduction of whipping as a punishment for procuration by the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1912 which resulted in a tremendous increase in the offence in 1913. The actual figures are as follows: —

Persons for trial for procuration

1910 25

1911 18

1912 14—Whipping introduced during this year

1913 73 

1914 41 

(see, “Social Aspects of Crime in England Between the Wars ” by Dr. Hermann Mannheim, Al!en & Unwin, 1940, p. 51)

From these facts it is obvious that flogging is not only a failure as a solution to violent crime but its effect as a deterrent is. to say the least, extremely dubious. Neither, of course, will the abolition of flogging solve the problem. No problem can be solved by ignoring it. These methods must fail because they leave the cause of the trouble untouched.

The first task for anybody seeking a solution is to understand the problem. Many instances of violence such as assaults on policemen or nightwatchmen are the result of hindering the burglar in the practice of his profession. We cannot, in fact, separate violence from the crime problem as a whole. We shall not, therefore, make the attempt.

Before seeking a clear insight into the causes of crime it is necessary—as with so many things—to clear away a big cobweb of misconception which clouds so many people's vision. This is the attractively simple but quite erroneous idea that the whole trouble is caused by a “criminal type"; a sort of biological monstrosity, like Siamese twins or two-headed giraffes; a mental monster whose criminal activities are the result of some inborn crime instinct. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and amongst those who have made a study of criminals the idea is generally discredited. Listen, for example, to Dr. Goring who, after making a careful examination of no less than 3,000 convicts, makes the following observations: —

“This anthropological monster has no existence in fact. The physical and mental constitution of both criminal and law-abiding persons of the same age, class, stature, and intelligence, are identical. There is no such thing as an anthropological criminal type." (“The Lawbreaker,” p. 44)

In fact the evidence tends to show that they are ordinary people like ourselves, a large number of whom possess many excellent qualities. For instance on page 54 of the same book, Mr. Justice du Parq is quoted as reporting a type of prisoner who is “young, determined, and adventurous," and Leo Page, who has a wide first hand knowledge of criminals, tells us in his book “Crime and the Community” (Faber & Faber, 1937 p. 99) that:

“One finds with a shock of surprise that they (professional criminals) can be courteous and well mannered, grateful and appreciative of just treatment or of a little kindness, or passionately fond of music or of flowers; they are often brave—a good burglar, for example, must of necessity be a man of nerve, courage and resource; some are well read, with a real love of books; others can be wonderfully loyal, in the odd distorted way in which they understand the meaning of the word; very many retain amongst all their troubles a smiling acceptance of fate and a keen sense of humour.”

It seems that we must look elsewhere for the causes of crime.

The law is a social institution made by man, it is not a biological product; so also is crime—its opposite pole or complement—a social phenomenon, and it is in society and not the individual that we must look for an explanation. Government and the machinery of state, which make and enforce the law, exist to conserve those private property institutions which are so vital to the interests of the ruling class and the continued smooth running of their capitalist economy. This being the case, we should expect to find some connection between crime and social conditions generally and economic conditions in particular. Let us put the matter to the test.

Dr. Mannheim tells us (Social Aspects etc., p. 123) that “the significance of economic factors in the causation of crime is fairly generally accepted," and farther on (pages 127 to 130) he reproduces statistics which show the figures for crime rising and falling through the years almost in step with those for unemployment; the only exception being after the slump of the early thirties when, although crime figures dropped for the older age groups, those for the younger groups continued to rise right up until the outbreak of war. This may be explained by other social factors; possibly the waning influence of religion during the inter-war period and the growing tendency of the rising generation to criticize hitherto accepted moral standards.

Another excellent example of the influence of economics upon lawlessness, which can be gleaned from pages 105-7 of the same book, is that of Germany whose terrific crime wave in the early twenties can be accounted for by the economic distress following her military defeat in 1918. It is also significant that whilst the figures for simple larceny had rocketed from 202,885 in 1920 to 308,005 in 1923, which was the peak year of her inflation, those for coining actually "slumped" from 341 in 1921 to 156 in 1923, so reflecting the instability of the Mark. Immediately after stabilization, however, there was a “boom” in the offence which resulted in no less than 1,094 convictions. In England where the economy had not been so seriously disturbed, crime increased far more steadily.

Lack of space makes over-simplification unavoidable and we fully recognize that all crime cannot be traced to economic factors so directly as this. We fully appreciate the importance of war and insecurity, and the effects of gross inequalities and the degrading position of the wage slave; all of them factors which themselves spring more or less directly from the capitalist nature of society. It could be argued that even the majority of sex crimes spring from the unnatural sexual institutions thrown up by property society; but as Dr. Goring tells us that 95 per cent, of all prisoners are convicted for acquisitive offences, (“The Lawbreaker", p. 39) we will not labour the point.

We live in an acquisitive society where we get our living in permanent competition with our fellows, and often at their expense; where periodic orgies of blood and violence such as we have recently experienced tend to instil a bias? attitude towards human suffering. Many people not only grow up in such a world and have the outlook which it engenders but they see also a few people living in a surfeit of luxury and ease without the necessity of work, whilst they are doomed to a life of toil; living in some overcrowded hovel in a sordid and ugly slum environment, through no fault of their own—other than choosing the wrong parents. Is it, then, not cause for wonder that so few take matters into their own hands and ignore those laws which enable a privileged minority to keep them in poverty and subjection?

Let us face it; there is no easy solution, the roots of crime go deep into the very basis of society itself. A vicious and competitive economy gives rise to vicious and anti-social behaviour. An economy based on a community of interests will give rise to co-operative and social behaviour; its establishment is the most urgent task confronting society today; and society includes you.

Meanwhile; crime marches on!

J. Trotman

News in Review: Quick look around (1965)

The News in Review column from the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quick look around

To those who find the headlines depressing, and who prefer to look for the news in the newspapers’ smaller columns (“Vicar, 73, Weds Secretary, 21”) we can offer little comfort.

Events which are considered of minor importance reflect the same drab image as the big news.

Nearly two million people are receiving National Assistance in this country, which shows that many more than two million are not sharing in whatever the Tories meant when they talked about our rising prosperity. About three quarters of those on National Assistance are pensioners, which shows again that although the shadow of want may have been lifted from some people (for example the judges who are soon going to get a twenty-five per cent rise in their already big wages) it still hangs over the retired worker.

We have been promised that the report of the government’s Study Group on the North West will shortly be published. The Group found that parts of the North West have the highest mortality rate in the country, due to the fact that so many of its people live in towns and cities, under squalid conditions. It also discovered a fact which some other people had known for a long time; that there are still plenty of slums in this country, and that they are increasing fast. The Group concluded, in fact, that it will take fifty years, at the present rates of clearance, to get rid of the North West’s slums.

In Geneva, United Nations Secretary General U Thant said that on present showing there will be more unemployment, more hunger, more malnutrition, in 1970 than there is today. “The misery of the developing world,” he said, “is a progressive misery. It threatens to grow worse in the second half of the decade.” The only comment to make here is that this gloomy opinion comes from someone who, with the job which he has, must obviously be one of the world’s top optimists.

There is no reason to hope that the news will get any better. It is apparent that there was something seriously lacking in the perceptive powers of the man who first said that every day, in every way, things are getting better and better.

Vietnam mission

It is fairly safe to assume that Mr. Wilson was not heedless of the political advantages to be gained from the publicity which was bound to accompany the suggested peace mission on Vietnam.

Perhaps it was even hoped that in the excitement few people would have realised that the mission had not actually done anything, or gone anywhere and that indeed most of its members had split up and gone home.

The mission was the same sort of empty gesture—like Chamberlain’s trip to Munich, like the Locarno Treaty in 1924 — which convince workers that capitalism’s leaders are about to solve the problem of war.

This conviction rests upon a delusion; that wars are caused by international statesmen omitting to talk before they start shooting—or rather, before they tell their workers to start shooting for them. (At one time there was a popular theory that Stalin’s intransigence could be dealt with by getting him to raise a Kremlin cricket team to play an XI from Westminster.)

In fact, there is no lack of opportunity for capitalism’s leaders to confer. And, as the Vietnam mission has shown, there are also plenty of informal channels through which they can communicate, even if they do not recognise each other’s existence. It is clear .that they fail to do so only when they think there are other ways of settling their differences.

It is also clear that wars are not caused by a failure of communication. They are caused by conditions which cannot be affected by any conference, and they start when further talking is pointless.

The Western powers are now trying to get the Vietcong to negotiate, when they are convinced that they are close to victory. This is something like Hitler trying to impose his terms on the Allies as his empire was collapsing in April 1945. Like any other war, the one in Vietnam has its own momentum of ruthlessness and it will be played out to its bitter end.

That will not be the end of the matter; Vietnam is only the latest of the small wars in the greater struggle between the world powers over which shall control and exploit South East Asia. There is no sense, no reason, no humanity, in such conflicts—and no “right” either on any side.

It is typical of Labour Party hypocrisy that they should pretend that normal human standards can be applied to the war in Vietnam. They are among the supporters of the social system which produces the war there and which could make it (to use the current ugly jargon) escalate into something which even Mr. Wilson does not pretend to be able to control.

Algerian conflict

During the long war for Algerian independence, the people who suffered in the nationalist cause were comforted by the thought that out of their tribulations freedom would be born in Algeria.

At that time, as the French forces were daily committing the most brutal of excesses, it was easy to represent the FLN as fighters for liberty.

One of the heroes of the rebellion, who quickly emerged as the effective ruler of Algeria after independence, was Ben Bella. He was supposed to be the man who, once the French had been banished, would lead the poor Algerian peasant to freedom and prosperity.

One of Ben Bella’s closest associates, the man who stood by him and did so much to help him root out opposition after the rebellion, was Colonel Boumedienne. If anyone bears a load of responsibility for selling Ben Bella as Freedom’s Messiah, it is Boumedienne.

Yet now, according to the Colonel, the whole thing was a mistake. Ben Bella does not stand for freedom—he is a despot, a demagogue. He squandered Algeria’s resources, he frightened off investors. (We should remind ourselves here that the Colonel, who has pledged himself to encourage investment in Algeria, calls himself a Socialist.)

It is too late, now, to discover that the Algerian rebellion was to result in replacing one despotism by another; it would have saved some lives if at the time Boumedienne had reminded his followers that nationalist risings often have that effect.

All nationalist movements claim that they are fighting for freedom, and not a few of them also claim to be Socialist as well. But when they get power, and the moment of truth arrives, they frequently impose dictatorships.

Algeria is only the latest of several countries in which this has happened recently, and in which the leaders of the rebellion, after they have won, have split and denounced each other as despots. In one after another of the new African states this has happened—sometimes until the imposition of a one-party state has silenced the opposition and left only one side to put over its point of view.

These are the fruits of nationalist rebellion. There can be few causes which have induced so many people to waste so much time, energy and blood.

Gaolbreak

One fact is often overlooked by the man-in-the-street advocate of the deterrent effect of heavy sentences. The more severe the sentence, the greater the incentive to escape.

Heavy sentences are often imposed on members of big and well-organised mobs like the Train Robbers, who are well enough equipped, in daring and organisation, to bring off a rescue from gaol.

The prison authorities are of course aware of this; if rumours are true they have thwarted plans to free two of the Train gang. But the criminals have the same sort of advantages as guerrilla fighters—they can move freely in the world outside, they can watch and wait and pounce when they think the moment has come.

The rescue of Ronald Biggs has confirmed what the escape of Charles Wilson showed—that big time crime is now refined and organised enough not to reject any job. Perhaps some criminals with a sense of humour might reflect that they at any rate are responding to the Labour government’s appeal for greater technical expertise in our work.

It has been often said that men like the Great Train Robbers would make excellent soldiers or big business men. It is apparent that they do have the required amount of ruthlessness to succeed in these fields.

At the moment, however, they prefer to rob people in ways which capitalism says are illegal, and to ignore other methods which are likely to bring them a place in the Honours List.

One thing the robbers fear above everything else, above imprisonment, above the nervous stress of their work, and that is to be a normal member of the working class. They cannot face the prospect of the daily journey to the factory or office, the clocking on and off, the monotonous routine jobs, the kowtowing to the boss, the leisure time spent in visiting or cutting the lawn.

This is one of the influences which persuade them to be criminals. It is also one of the influences which persuade the capitalist class to hang on to their privileged situation, and to the rights it brings them to be legalised robbers.