White supremacy is stupid (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a world that is becoming smaller and societies that are becoming multicultural, it may be time for Western culture to examine critically its view of other cultures. For how much of Western culture is made up of prejudice about other cultures? How much of Western identity is constructed upon the negative identity of others?

Decolonization in a political sense has occurred. What remains to be addressed, however, is cultural decolonization. The legacy of several hundred years of Western expansion and domination, manifested in racism, continues to be recycled in Western cultures in the form of stereotyped images of non Western cultures.

Social Construct

It has often been observed that "race" is not a reality but a social construct. In his study of the "Jewish question'', Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "Don't ask what the Jews are, but what we have made the Jews”. This applies equally to images of Africa and blacks. The term "White on Black” refers to the whole spectrum of relations in which Western interests were dominant — the trans-Atlantic slave trade, master-slave relations on plantations in the Americas, colonialism, the post-colonial era. and majority minority relations in the Western world. In each of these situations Europeans constructed images of Africa and blacks on the basis of selective perception, expedience, second hand information mingled with reconstructed biblical notions and medieval folklore, along with popular and "scientific” ideas that were current at the time.

Stereotypes of Africa and of blacks are still in circulation but old images have faded away or acquired new meaning and new images have arisen. In the second half of the 20th century, "race” is no longer invoked as the primary key to differences; it has been succeeded by systems of differences founded not on biology but on culture.

"Race" discrimination has increasingly yielded to discrimination along cultural lines, bringing with it different sets of images. Hence "racism" in the literal sense is no longer a satisfactory term to understand the changing realities. Culture as a new basis for differentiation is much more diffuse in its ideological claims than race theory, but in some ways equally effective in establishing boundaries and demarcations. While science marched forward, popular thinking in Europe still followed Christian modes of thought. Genesis (9:18-27) relates that "Noah drank wine and fell into slumber while naked”. Ham, his youngest son, saw him but did not cover his shame, whereas his brothers Japheth and Shem covered their father with cloth. Awakened, Noah praised Shem and blessed Japheth. but cursed Ham.

Curse of Ham

In the early Church the curse of Ham or Canaan was regarded as an explanation of slavery, but not simply of blacks because slavery at the time was "colour-less". The association of the curse of Ham with blackness arose only much later in medieval Talmudic texts. In the 16th century it became a Christian theme and by the 17th century it was widely accepted as an explanation of black skin colour. From here it was just a step to the interpretation of the curse of Ham as an explanation of and justification for the slavery of black Africans.

The view of Africa as a continent condemned to eternal servitude was well suited to a theological assessment of slavery. According to the theological explanation, the Continents were peopled by descendants of Japheth (Europe), Shem (Asia) and Ham (Africa), ranked in a master-servant relationship. Until well into the 19th century, even after the development of the theory of race, this remained the most popular explanation of slavery.

Minorities often a find place in society in certain specialized occupations. No matter how unreal and how dependent on circumstances its position in the labour market is. it is often extremely difficult for a minority to overcome the stereotyping that goes with that position.

The occupational roles allocated to blacks in Western society are an example a minority specialization which has been in existence so long that it seems to reflect the "natural" order: entertainment and sport.

The first role blacks were permitted to perform in White society, after that of slave or servant, was that of entertainer. Indeed entertainment was itself one of the functions of slaves. Entertainers do not threaten the status quo but embellish it. Emotive expression by blacks is accepted and conforms to the rhythm myth, the stereotype of musicality. Thus over the past century, blacks have become the musicians, dancers and buffoons of Atlantic culture.

Sporting challenge

Another terrain on which blacks have been permitted to manifest themselves is in sport. Several sports had travelled along with Africans to the New World and. according to a study by the tennis champion Arthur Ashe who died recently, by the mid-19th century several sports were integrated. The achievements of black athletes challenged "white supremacy" and breached the myth of "racial" inferiority. The integration of sport is part of overall black integration. But it is also a limited kind of success. Their success seems to confirm one of the stereotypes of the black as bestial brute, the all brawn-and-no-brains kind of athlete. At first the story was that blacks were inferior to whites in every respect, physically as well, and therefore unfit to compete with whites led to other stories about blacks having "abnormal muscular qualities, different from those of white men”.

Recently a Tory councillor in Derby was quoted as claiming that "black people do not use swimming pools because they cannot float":

"Retired teacher Colin Brown, 59, said: 'Black people are very heavily boned and they sink. It’s a physiological fact that was taught when I was studying physical education. You never see any black Africans in Olympic swimming finals, do you?’” (Sun, 9 September).

Racism never comes alone. It forms part of a hierarchical mental set which also targets other groups. The features attributed to groups define by “race" are not peculiar to racism, but are also attributed to entirely different categories defined according to social status, gender, age, nationality and so forth.

What racism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination all have in common is social inequality. The common denominator is power — the power that arises from a hierarchical situation and the power required to maintain that situation and, also the anxiety that comes with power and privilege.

Michael Ghebre

Letter: ‘White privilege”? (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘White privilege”?

This letter is in response to the Pathfinders article in the May Socialist Standard, titled ‘Without Distinction of Race or Sex‘.

Firstly, I’m against the author’s argument that the capitalist system will always promote whites over more talented minority-ethnic candidates; it’s in the best interest of enterprises to hire the most talented worker for the job. Poor white people don’t see talk of ‘white privilege’ as an attack on their ‘rights’, they see it as being an attack on them due to their skin colour.

We shouldn’t fall into the bourgeois trap of fighting for equality among the proletariat (based on skin colour, etc), not that that’s achievable anyway. While certain groups of people (on average) and individuals undoubtedly have harder lives under capitalism than others, the entire capitalist class oppresses the entire working class. Our enemy is the capitalist class (they screw us all over, though some more than others).

None of us are free until we are all free.

Matthew Shearn

Reply:

The article was not advocating but explaining the critical race theory argument that ‘disadvantaged groups will never get a fair shake unless a little positive discrimination is introduced’ and that ‘as things stand, the system will always promote whites over more talented ethnic candidates’. It then goes on to make your exact point, that discrimination is not logical for employers, before adding that ‘prejudice is not logical’, a view with which you will hardly disagree.

The article refers in passing to ‘talk of “white privilege”’, but we ourselves don’t use the term as it could imply that all ‘white’ workers discriminate against all ‘non-white’ workers whereas such discrimination is an historical left-over from colonialist times which many workers today emphatically do not endorse. Much violence is perpetrated by workers scapegoating other workers, and there’s nothing ‘bourgeois’ about saying so. If, as we argue, the route to class emancipation is class solidarity, then the question is how best to achieve that solidarity. So we call out worker-against-worker discrimination and violence for what it is, in effect class betrayal. 

Editors

Editorial: Race and respectability (1988)

Editorial from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard 

One necessary skill of professional politicians is an ability to cloak the prejudices of their potential supporters in respectable language. We know that nobody in the public eye is a racist, and the British reputation for fair play could be further enhanced if more people prefaced their remarks with reassurances like "I detest apartheid as much as the next white Anglo-Saxon but. . ."; “Some of my best friends are Asian shopkeepers but. . . ."; or even “While I don't mind a hint of curry on my Guardian now again . . .".

The rejection of “liberal attitudes" on race by large numbers of workers does not place them automatically in the camp of the mindless bigot, which is why much anti-racist legislation and practice has had minimal effect. Asians with knife scars and families behind boarded council flat windows can testify to the more virulent strains of the disease, but pumping through the bloodstream of society is racism of a much more matter-of-fact, unselfconscious kind. The statement “he's a darkie, but quite pleasant" assumes shared attitudes and feelings and can be made without any awareness that it causes offence: blacks are viewed as one more natural hazard to be avoided, like bronchitis or barking dogs.

Recognition that such ingrained prejudice cannot be washed away by a constant assertion that there is no difference between "them" and "us" — an approach which anyway takes no account of non overt discrimination — has led to a much more sustained assault on the values and assumptions of "white British culture", at least in the field of education. That the consequence may well be a more segregated society, with white parents opting for what they perceive to be in the material interest of their children, should not be a surprise. Tolerance is clearly a skin-deep matter of proximity and numbers, and the symbolic and ill-functioning character of dogmatic anti-racist practice has given sustenance to those who hide their racism behind the banner of "freedom of choice". As with much race relations law, resentment has been stimulated against those who are seen to be positively favoured.

The various racist Immigration Acts passed by Conservative and Labour governments to keep non-whites out of Britain reflected and gave respectability to the view that blacks or Asians are the cause of social problems. The fact that legislation now prohibits discrimination is neither here nor there: property owners no longer publicly state that blacks are not welcome but simply do not accept them; employers are obliged to treat job applicants on their merits and do so with tongues in cheeks. A surface respectability fails miserably to conceal a situation where non-whites are far more likely to be unemployed, far more likely to be in low paid jobs and bound by the frustration their position creates.

The ideas of the racist cannot be legislated away because they arise from and are nurtured by the society in which we live. As every schoolboy knows, Columbus discovered America and Marco Polo was the first to set foot in China; at least, these were the first personages from white western society to do so, which any enlightened schoolgirl knows to be not the same thing. And if the history books tell us that nothing of any consequence occurred before a white man came along, it is not difficult to see why low social status and inferiority remain associated with a black skin.

Historically, the doctrines of white supremacy and anti-semitism originated as weapons to defend pre-capitalist systems of exploitation, and it has been one of the tasks of capitalism to break down all social divisions except that between the wealthy and the propertyless. This, however, it can never succeed in doing, since of necessity individual worker is set against individual worker in the struggle for a living and many forms of hatred and prejudice flourish as a result. If racial equality were somehow achieved, we could still not have an integrated, harmonious society because capitalism demands constant selection and exclusion and therefore creates the insecurity on which racism breeds.

Those who benefit from divisions within society do not have to compete for third-rate education and housing: there are no racist attacks at Charterhouse or riots in Belgravia. The civilised setting of the gentleman's club is also more conducive to an evenhanded treatment of racial matters — white semi-detached proles are held in only marginally less contempt than their darker-skinned counterparts and the "them" and "us" of racist mythology are translated into real, class terms.

Proper Gander: ‘She’s Part Of Those Statistics Now’ (2021)

The Proper Gander TV column from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘All the doctors came in. And I knew. … I felt her leave. And then they told us. What do you do?’, says Naomi Ventour, as she recalls the day her sister Natalie died shortly after giving birth to her second child. ‘She’s part of those statistics now’, Naomi adds, referring to how as a black woman, Natalie was at least four times more likely to die during or soon after pregnancy than a white woman. This disparity is examined by Channel 4’s recent documentary in the Dispatches strand, The Black Maternity Scandal. Presenter and mother-of-three Rochelle Humes is of dual heritage, and so is three times more likely to suffer a maternal death than a white woman. She speaks with women like Naomi who have been affected, and also with researchers and campaigners aiming to address the problem.

Of the 2.2 million women who gave birth in the UK between 2016 and 2018, 34 black women in every 100,000 died up to a year after, compared with 15 Asian women and eight white women (tinyurl.com/59akcr63, p.1). For every one who dies during pregnancy, a hundred more will suffer a life-threatening complication, and again this affects a disproportionate number of non-white women. One such additional risk is coronavirus: in the UK, ‘black pregnant women are eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid-19 [than white pregnant women], while Asian women are four times as likely’ (tinyurl.com/n4rba64n, p.17).

What causes these depressing disparities? A possibility not raised by the programme is whether they are due to genetic differences between groups of people which put some inherently at higher risk. The prevalence of a few health issues is related to genes found more commonly in particular ethnic groups, such as sickle cell disease. But maternal death isn’t a single condition, and therefore doesn’t have a single cause which can be reduced to a set of genes. Maternal deaths are often associated with conditions like heart disease, blood clots and mental health problems, all of which can have multiple causes, including social factors such as lifestyle and environment. So, if women in particular ethnic groups are more likely to have health conditions which contribute to maternal deaths, then this is because they are more likely to lead lives which exacerbate those conditions. Living in poverty comes with increased chances of having a poor diet, depression and inadequate housing, all of which would impact negatively on a pregnancy. Consequently, women in the most deprived areas of England are three times more at risk of suffering a maternal death than those in the most affluent areas (tinyurl.com/59akcr63, table 2.10). There are higher proportions of non-white people living in poorer areas, especially first and second-generation settlers who came into the country with little money and few opportunities.

But the disparity isn’t only accounted for by the additional health risks which come with poverty. Another factor is an inconsistency in how people of different ethnic groups are treated by the health service. One study from the USA highlighted a mistaken belief that black people can bear more pain than white people, which led to lower amounts of painkillers being prescribed (tinyurl.com/mjfmuawn). In the documentary, Humes talks with women who felt that medical staff didn’t take their concerns seriously enough because they aren’t white. When this isn’t down to ignorant individuals being racist, an explanation is given by Dr Christine Ekechi of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She says that historically, the institutions of medical care were set up around the needs of white men who had most power in society, and particular needs of women and non-white people were added on, and still don’t always have equal recognition.

So, what is being done to address the issue? November 2020’s report by the government’s Joint Human Rights Committee – Black People, Racism and Human Rights – made the blunt admission that ‘the NHS acknowledge and regret this disparity but have no target to end it’ (tinyurl.com/n4rba64n, p.3). The widely criticised report by The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which concluded that the system is no longer rigged against non-white people referred to the disparity, but was vague about any proposed solutions because first ‘the increased rates seen in ethnic minority groups need to be better understood and explained’ (tinyurl.com/t8rrrcy4, p.218).

Hopefully, further research will expand on the social and economic reasons behind the disparity and maternal deaths in general, but where will this lead? Nadine Dorries, Minister for Mental Health, Suicide Prevention and Patient Safety has said that she is ‘absolutely committed to tackling disparities and making sure all women get the right support and best possible maternity care’. If this is more than just a soundbite, there may be reforms or changes to procedures which will help prevent some future tragedies. But whatever measures are put in place will depend on how much funding is politically and financially viable, and how much of a priority the issue has among society’s countless other problems. The deeper causes of the issue – poverty and division – can’t be legislated away because they’re built into how society is structured.

Mike Foster

Race or Class? (2020)

From the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The killing of George Floyd has contributed hugely to the worldwide consciousness of police brutality, but also to some important points about class.

There has been a spontaneous response to Floyd’s murder, more or less united, organised around principles of solidarity, that has taken the world by storm.

In less than a month, protests tens-of-thousands strong have popped up, making the call for increased consciousness of race issues. Revealingly, it is this aspect of it that is focused on by most left-liberal analysis. Race is undoubtedly an important aspect of the present issues in society. However, it is not the only aspect.

Class plays a fundamental role in capitalist society. With ever increasing talk of ‘identity politics’, we see the class issue being diminished in favour of other problems. The other problems are very real and very important, without question, but they are underpinned by class.

What is espoused by identity politics is that there is no fundamental problem but multiple, overlapping issues: everyone has a unique perspective to offer; a white working-class person cannot understand the issues faced by a bourgeois person of colour, or a female CEO will not know the problems of male workers. There is something to be said for this, but where the issue arises is their view that these are fundamentally distinct issues that simply happen to overlap.

What is not appreciated is that some issues are more basic than others in capitalist society and may be resolved without resolution of the others.

Socialism cannot exist while racism exists, but capitalism can exist even when racial tensions are at an end (the plausibility of this is another matter, it is simply a possibility). This isn’t to denigrate the problems of racism, but simply to understand that they are underpinned by a more deeply rooted issue: class.

The issues are related, of course. The working class cannot achieve its full consciousness unless it recognises that the international working class is its ally and not its competitor. Much of capitalist propaganda revolves around turning the working class against its migrant allies by use of language like ‘the immigrants stealing the jobs’. We can dismiss this as a straightforward case of racism.

A more rigorous inspection leads us to believe that the act of the working class co-operating would be devastating to capitalism, and, consequently, all that can be done to fragment the workers and to pit them against one another must be done. We can see, even in current demonstrations, something of this streak.

To take a concrete example, people in Seattle have declared an autonomous zone, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, with mutual aid systems and community organised demonstrations. Police are not allowed to enter. It has been praised by prominent left-wing institutions (such as the Industrial Workers of the World) and met with great optimism by many leftists.

Donald Trump tweeted that ‘these ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY [sic]’. Some of the optimism is merited, insofar as it gives us a glimpse of what socialism may look like. Of course, nothing can be planned in any great detail, but the spontaneous actions of workers in times of crisis shows what the natural human instincts for social organisation are. Therein lies the real benefit of crises.

The brilliance of such organisations is that they give a small insight into what a society without class divides might be like, and demonstrate concretely the feasibility of such a society.

They spring up from all sorts of crises: Occupy Wall Street following the crash of 2008 had similar institutions. In this case, it is a crisis prompted by racial tensions that has led to increased consciousness of class tensions. We must appreciate the connection between the two and the fundamental nature of capitalist society if we are to make serious progress.

M. P. Shah

Beggar’s belief (1999)

From the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Capitalism creates a mass of people who are permanently unemployed and then has to devise means to control them.

In 1728 John Gay wrote The Beggar’s Opera for the London stage. It was an attack on the corruption of Robert Walpole’s government of private men and on the self-interested motivations that were now to drive society. It featured a central character called Mr. Peachum, a turn-key (gaoler), who aided, organised and fenced for the criminal fraternity of London (representing the cut-throat selfishness of Walpole’s ministers) and then turned them in to the authorities when they were no longer profitable to him.

It is not surprising that such a play should appear with the arrival of capitalism within society, with its emphasis on mercenary personal gain replacing any notion of loyalty or community. It is also not surprising that a prison was the chosen setting, nor that the law was seen as a corrupt tool in the hands of a selfish few. What is surprising, is how durable this image from the dawn of Modernity has turned out to be.

The prison was a common feature of 18th century writing, because it was emerging as a new and devastating weapon in the class war. Under feudalism the population could be controlled by fear, by selected spectacular public executions, to keep the whole thing running. Emergent industrial capitalism, however, needed a disciplined workforce, ready to clock on and work like machines, and obey. For industrial capitalism, gory punishments and executions were wasteful, and did not create sufficient internal discipline. Other methods were required.

Thus, with the advance of capitalism, we see less and less reliance on execution as a means of social control, and more and more on the rise of the prison. It is telling that the prominent liberal philosopher Jeremy Bentham advanced, for his idea of a Utilitarian Utopia, the Panopticon, a prison/workhouse/school, wherein from a central tower an observer could see into all the individual cells, without being seen themself. The idea was that the uncertainty of not being detected would prevent the inhabitants from stepping out of line, and thus there would be no offences. This was a fantasy of the factory, perfectly compliant workers, in their place, and knowing their own duty and work. It is also an image from which capitalism has never been able to escape, because it is precisely that discipline that it needs to function. This applies not just in the workplace, but in the whole of society.

Surplus population

The big problem for capitalism is that it contains the seeds for its own discord, so whenever social discipline breaks down prison is deployed to try and patch things up. The prison remains as a solid reminder of the anti-social nature of capitalism.

Capitalism creates such social breakdown because its creates a “surplus population”. Capitalism can, to keep up the compulsion on the workers to work, only fully maintain those workers who succeed in selling their labour power. Some of the rest are maintained at a lower level as an “industrial reserve army” to be used in the event of production expanding. Beyond them is a stagnant pool of the permanently unemployed who are regarded as “unemployable”. In recent years, as economic growth has slowed and the introduction of labour-saving methods continued, the size of this pool has grown. As far as the capitalist is concerned these workers, since they are on no use to them, can go hang (quite literally in the past).

Thus Noam Chomsky has spoken of “a kind of superfluous population there’s no point in educating because there’s nothing to do with them. You put them in prison because we’re a civilized people and you don’t send death squads out to murder them” (interview with David Barsamian, 1971).

The facts for America bear this out. In California education budgets have been slashed, and prison officers earn 30 percent more than lecturers, with a massive increase in the use of prisons. In that state alone over 130,000 people were held in prison in 1995, and it was still rising then. California has allocated $3.2 billion extra to its prison budget since 1992. Nor is California alone, and nor is it the worst. In 1993 California had 607 prisoners per 100,000 population, Texas had 700, and Georgia had 730. The combined totals of the three most populated European states (France, UK, Germany) only reached 84 per 100,000 head of population in the same year. In 1997 in the USA the figure was 645.

In 1995 5.4 million Americans were within the prison system (that includes remand, on parole, in prison, etc.), which works out as about 5 percent of the adult male population. The prison system has been deployed, to great effect, both to ameliorate the unemployment statistics (all those prisoners don’t show up) and to control the “socially excluded”. Within the vast network of controls, the US poor are being restrained and disciplined. This is on top of the increasing number of restraints being imposed by the American “welfare” system.

In recent years in Britain, both under the Tories and Labour, the prison population has began to shoot up as our masters, realising the bankrupt nature of their policies, and the stagnant nature of modern capitalism, decided to copy the US model. According to Home Office Statistics for 1997, there were 61,114 people in prison in the UK, 5,833 more than the previous year, and increase of 11 percent. The prison population has increased by 37 percent since 1993 (when it was 44,570), and it is clear that it is the greater use of custodial sentences that has caused that increase. The number of prisoners per 100,000 head of population has also increased to 111 (120 in England and Wales, 119, in Scotland and 95 in Northern Ireland), second only to Portugal in Europe.

What’s more is the increasing use of private prisons, selling them to a whole bunch of Peachums, to make a profit from locking up the poor (Gay is still with us). The massive amount of spending on prisons is going to create a demand to keep the prisons full (which will be complemented by police arrest quotas), to justify the payments and swell the security firms’ profits. As the system gets more and more expanded, more firms are being allowed a slice of the prison cake. In August this year, two months after the 1000th convict was tagged for home detention (a cheap and easy modern equivalent of the Panopticon, to enable the government to extend prison control even further), the government announced the winning firms that had tendered to administer these schemes.

The Curfew Orders which necessitate tagging are a way of subtly increasing the effect of prison, and controlling the numerous “petty offenders” for whom prison is too expensive and wasteful and option

More discipline

In April, the government announced that it was going to extend its “Welfare to Work” scheme to some lucky young prisoners, to help them find work (and thus buck the 76 percent recidivism rate for young offenders). This linking (apart from being a naked attempt to try and use their “captive audience” to increase the success figure for the New Deal) demonstrates the intrinsic values of the New Con, that it is a device by which the government is trying to control the surplus population, and allocate them to work, whenever they can find it for them. Already they are embarking on making it mandatory for single mothers to attend their initial New Deal interviews. Increasingly more and more strings are attached to “welfare”. Inspectors can call round at recipients homes and look round for signs of co-habitation, with a de-facto search warrant, under threat of extra-judicial punishment (removal of benefits).

Prison is also a device by which to promote and re-enforce racial division in society (as if creating a “criminal class” isn’t divisive enough). In Britain 1.5 percent of the British male population are Caribbean, however a staggering 10.4 percent of the British male prison population are likewise Caribbean. Of the female prison population, 12.9 percent were Caribbean, while only 1.8 percent of the general female population are.

The racism aspect is worsened when one considers that some 2,720 immigrants are held in “Detention Centres” as what the Home Office euphemistically calls “non-Criminal Prisoners”, part of the government’s attempts to prevent immigrants entering the country.

Also prison was used extensively for fine defaulters, of whom some 6,300 found their way to gaol, helping victimise the poor of society even more.

It is worth remembering, that throughout the Thatcher Years, police pay awards were significantly above other public sector pay awards (such as nurses and teachers), as the government fought to secure the loyalty of the police force. The result of this can be seen in the difference between the police involvement in the Miners’ Strike (with an illegal national police force being established, and the miners’ freedom of movement restricted) and recent events in Australia, where the police refused to intervene in the dockers’ dispute telling the government straight that they should fight their own battles. Also, increasingly, local councils are reliant on Close Circuit Television Cameras (with ever increasing sophistication) to keep an eye on us and ensure we are behaving (that damned panoptic eye again). We are not judged to be responsible enough to go about our own lives.

Other attacks on basic liberties abound, police stop and search powers are increased, the right to silence is removed, the right to trial by jury is decreased, freedom of movement is restricted. The change of government has made no difference. Increasingly the state is trying to shape and control our lives through bureaucracy or through the police.

The only solution open to capitalism now, faced with social decay and chaos, is to criminalise the “surplus population”, to lock them up, to take control of them and increase discipline throughout society. Capitalism’s only solutions are brutal and barbaric, and in 1997 70 inmates of prisons killed themselves.

Socialism offers to end the social conditions that cause that breakdown and necessitate enforced discipline, offering instead self-worth, and freedom of association in production, a strong inclusive social identity. The prison is not a symbol of capitalism. Capitalism is a prison, and it is imperative for us to try and break out of it.

Pik Smeet

Wood for the Trees: The stable doors of instability (2019)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Very occasionally an outrage occurs within the capitalist system that even the ruling class cannot ignore. In the wake of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry perhaps it’s time to look at the history of British Public Inquiries and assess their place within the body politic of this country. Let’s look at the origin, motivation, reality and effectiveness of this very British institution.

Having its origins in the 1920s the PI was initially set up to deal with public unease concerning natural or technical disasters such as train crashes and floods etc. but in 1957 there was a great scandal involving corrupt dealers making fortunes out of ‘inside information’ concerning bank rates. A public tribunal was set up and successfully managed to assure the public that it would not happen again – which, of course, it has and continues to do so. This probably gave the elite the confidence that this was a way of seeming to do something about political scandals while also covering up any major implications for themselves and the capitalist system as a whole.

However when the next great scandal exploded (the Profumo Affair) they chose the wrong ‘pair of safe hands’ in the form of Lord Denning. Although not initially a public inquiry the wide-ranging nature of his investigation shone a light on the meaningless and decadent lifestyles of the parasite class that fed the increasingly prurient 1960s media. The establishment, in its haste to cover the thing up, had chosen a moral crusader who lifted the veil on the reality of class society that helped accelerate the ‘end of deference’.

In 1972 on ‘Bloody Sunday’ 28 people were shot (14 fatally) by the British army during a peaceful demonstration against internment in Northern Ireland. Such was the level of outrage at the murders that the establishment was forced to hold an enquiry but this time, in the safe hands of Lord Widgery, it produced the expected whitewash and the army was exonerated. The story did not end there however as the bitterness lingered for decades leading to another inquiry headed by Lord Saville which began in 1998. This overturned almost all of the conclusions of Lord Widgery and led to an apology from David Cameron in the House of Commons – however only one ‘scapegoat’ was ever prosecuted for murder.

In the wake of the race riots in 1981 Lord Scarman was called to head an investigation into their cause. He made several recommendations emphasising ‘community’ policing which were subsequently ignored and it took another report by Sir William Macpherson (as a result of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence) to finally force an admission that a major cause of both racist violence and the subsequent cover-up was the institutional racism within the police. Investigations can drag on for years and even, as with the Hillsborough Disaster, for decades because of the tension between ‘getting to the truth’ and the desire to protect the integrity of institutions like the political establishment, army and police. . Let us now turn to a very different type of institution – the NHS.

Two scandals were to shake the always beleaguered NHS in the early 2000s. Dr. Harold Shipman became Britain’s worst serial killer whose victims numbered into the hundreds over many years. Dame Janet Smith was given the task of finding out why his crimes had gone undiscovered for so long. She was to recommend many changes to the protocols of death certification and drug prescription but as a result of dealing with endless bureaucratic ‘red-tape’ she was later to say, with exasperation that trying to implement change within such an establishment was like ‘attempting to herd cats’. In 2007 the terrible events at Stafford General Hospital resulted in a PI under Robert Francis but only after he had complained about the limited and restrictive nature of his former investigations. It is estimated that up to 1,200 patients died due to neglect between 2005 and 2008 at the hospital. Only two nurses were subsequently ‘struck off’ the medical register.

Of all the disasters that have brought forth public enquiries none have been more shocking than that of the Iraq war of 2003. Sir John Chilcot chaired this investigation which centred on the fantasy that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Although widely condemned as a ‘whitewash’ the report did show many deficiencies in the quality of ‘intelligence’ and how it was used to support a war that had already been politically decided upon by Bush and Blair. The deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis represent one of the greatest crimes in British history and the failure of a Public Inquiry to bring anyone to justice for this underlines the true nature of such investigations.

Although used primarily as a safety valve for public catharsis these inquiries always have a limited government remit and many are no longer content for members of the establishment to ‘self regulate’. The Grenfell Tower investigation is already showing signs of being another establishment whitewash. Perhaps with its failure this ‘Public Inquiry’ might be the last of its kind. Any investigation into major disasters within capitalism will usually fail to find the ultimate cause unless they become investigations of capitalism itself. From the perspective of our rulers the PI has been very successful in diverting attention from the capitalist system and finding scapegoats to blame. We are not suggesting that there will be no disasters within a socialist society but we can say with certainty that there will be no vested interests to protect, no corners cut to endanger safety and no protection of the guilty from being held responsible.

Wez.

The British National Party: the symptom not the disease (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot has been said about the BNP in recent months, none of it good. Apart from calls to ban the BNP in the wake of a three-fold increase in racially-motivated attacks in the past year, there has been a lot of scaremongering. Newspaper columnists have put forward nightmare scenarios, prompted by Derek Beackon’s victory in Millwall last September. Earlier this year an Observer article began: “The Right-Wing British National Party is poised to win another two council seats in London’s Isle of Dogs, giving it control of a budget of about £23 million” (6 March). And, in the May council elections, no part of Britain received as much media scrutiny as the East End of London.

The original BNP victory, however, had less to do with the racist views of the average voter in Millwall and more to do with local voters protesting at the inertia of the mainstream parties on matters such as housing and unemployment. This must be coupled with the turn-out that day. This May, Beackon was defeated in spite of his tally increasing by 500. [561 votes, in fact] The turnout this time round was 30 percent up on last September’s by-election. Neither is the fact that racist parties in England polled 6.8 percent of the vote evidence of a new rising tide of fascism. As far as racism goes in Britain, the tide never went out.

To give the average workers their due, few really believe the clap-trap the BNP leader, John Tyndall, spouts. For one thing, the mainstream parties, Labour, Conservative and the Lib-Dems, have been giving the public the same cant for years, albeit a watered-down version.

All racists now
John Tyndall, for instance, believes we should buy British and stop foreign imports, but his ideology is imported from Nazi Germany. He believes in the death penalty, but so do most Tory MPs and the majority of the police force. He claims his is the only party that “puts British people first in jobs and housing”, but in the past year Liberal Democrat and Labour councils have been taken to the High Court for pursuing racist housing policies. Last November the Guardian ran a headline: “Labour councils face race bias allegations” (29 November). A UNISON branch secretary commented that in 50 “disciplinaries” he had attended in eighteen months, only two of the workers he had represented had been white.

The BNP oppose immigration, but Margaret Thatcher secured National Front sympathies in 1978 when she said, musing at the prospect of 4 million Britons of “New Commonwealth” origin by the year 2000: “Now that is an awful lot and I think it means people are rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people of a different culture.” Ten years earlier, a Labour government had rushed through the Commonwealth Immigration Act in three days, introducing the racist concept of patriality and excluding thousands of persecuted Kenyan Asians in the process. That Act, however, was one of only eight racist Acts passed this century to restrict the flow of immigrants.

The BNP are anti-Europe and believe in British independence. On April 24, the Times reported on John Major’s xenophobic ranting regarding Europe. Major feared that opposition parties would surrender Britain’s “sovereignty” to Brussels, that they were “diluting” our national identity. He went on to tell supporters that “we must never forget the traditions and inheritance of the past”.

One would have thought that Major would have learned from Michael Portillo’s media wrist-slapping a month earlier, when he told students at Southampton University that “outside this country the standards of public life are way below what goes on in this country . . . Go to any other country and when you have got an A level you have bought it or you were a friend of the minister” (Guardian, 4 February).

Tyndall, though, not only passes off the hackneyed sentiments of racialism as his own to would-be voters, he looks upon the average voter with contempt and is on record as saying: “What we oppose is the method whereby the man in the street is called upon to pass judgements on aspects of affairs of which he has no understanding.” Not only does the BNP have no elected leadership, there are no women with pivotal roles within the party.

In reality, Tyndall is little more than a poor man’s führer leading an intellectually bankrupt party of shorn-headed bigots.

Pointing the finger

Workers should be aware that the only way to confront such fascists is on the battlefield of ideas, not with clubs and boots. The fact that so many “left-wing” groups believe they should be banned is evidence that they have yet to come up with the arguments to discredit them. It does not say much for allegedly socialist movements (such as the SWP and Militant) to call upon the state to pass laws proscribing fascist activity. If they really had the interests of the working class at heart, they should be pointing the finger of blame at the real perpetrator of racism — the capitalist system.

For instance, an Oxford University report published in December 1992 found that 7 out of 18 judges sampled sentenced black defendants more harshly than whites. This February, the Guardian (18 February) reported on how elements within the judiciary (Circuit and High Court judges) were resisting moves to be trained in race awareness. Lincoln Crawford, a Bar Council member, commented on how it was the educational system the judiciary were brought up in that “produced people who were self-confident, proud of their heritage and history and deeply grounded in their society’s basic values, but without any knowledge of the ethnic minority communities, their culture, sensitivity and sentiments.”

Newspapers last year reported several cases of racism within the army (in 1992 only 0.6 percent of recruits were non-whites) and the police force. In May this year, a black detective, DC Barry Thompson, won compensation and an apology from the police for racial abuse and discrimination he suffered while on a training course. In March an industrial tribunal ruled that black lecturer Stanley Jenkins had been subjected to “institutional discrimination and victimisation”. For eight years he had endured taunts of “wog”, “sambo" and “nigger” from students, while the governing body of Thanet College, Broadstairs, Kent, failed to take action to stop it. A report published the same month found that “solicitors are actually discriminating against blacks in recruiting trainees” (Guardian, 21 April). A survey of 4,000 law students found that white students had a 47 percent chance of getting articles with law firms, compared to 7 percent blacks.

In government, racism is just as rife. In December 1993, the Home Office attempted to pass legislation authorising the fire service to record the ethnic origins of fire victims. This was rightfully attacked by the firefighters’ union as an “outrageous monitoring service for racial purposes” (Guardian, 17 December). When it comes to immigration, the Home Office is a law unto itself. It believes it is entitled to detain asylum-seekers under the 1971 Immigration Act without giving reasons — a belief that does not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, which states:

"Everyone who is arrested shall he informed, in a language which he understands, of the reason for his arrest and of any charges against him. ”

A few months after the death of Joy Gardner at the hands of immigration officers and the police, because she had overstayed a six-month visitor’s permit, immigration officers at Gatwick detained 190 Jamaicans off one flight who were visiting relatives in Britain. Two days later, on Christmas Day, 27 were put back on board a plane for Kingston.

Politicians, however, appear to be the most vociferous in their nationalistic and racial rantings.

In 1964, the incoming Labour Foreign Secretary lost his Smethwick seat to a Tory who had used the slogan “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

Two days before the 1992 General Election, the Daily Express ran the headline: “BAKER’S MIGRANT FLOOD WARNING — LABOUR SET TO OPEN DOORS” (7 April 1992).

Likewise, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn pointed out a few days before the same election that a Labour victory would result in Britain being “swamped by immigrants of every colour and race and on any excuse of asylum or bogus marriage, or just plain deception”. (Runnymede Trust Bulletin, May 1992).

Racism, then, is not the poorly-thought-out doctrine of a few hundred bonehead supporters of the BNP. Neither will a ban on the BNP eradicate racist sentiments.

Scapegoats

Claire Dissington of the Anti-Nazi League recently remarked uncharacteristically, that “if you ban the BNP it does not eliminate the reason for racism. Racist groups have become popular because of the recession and people want to find a scapegoat” (Guardian, 28 September 1993).

William Rees-Mogg takes this a little further when he says “the essence of their propaganda [the Nazis] was to speak to the emotions and not to the reason of the people” (Times, 19 May 1993). Fascism, he asserts, “is always fuelled by the anger of the dispossessed”.

Workers will indeed feel more alienated during recession, more so in run-down areas like Tower Hamlets, where unemployment is high and housing policy a shambles. In 1992, Tower Hamlets had a housing stock of 67,000 houses, 45,000 of which were considered in desperate need of repair or unfit to live in.

Dispossessed, frustrated and alienated workers will always look for a short-cut to even up the imbalance between themselves and their masters. One only has to look at crime statistics. Is it any wonder workers are hoodwinked into believing ethnic communities are the cause of their misfortune, and so must bear the brunt of their frustration

In the past thirty years a host of racist organisations have sprouted up with the same utterings (League of Empire Loyalists, BNP, Racial Preservation Society, Greater Britain Movement, National Front, SS Wotan 88, Blood and Honour, Combat 18). Their impact on the political scene has been as insignificant as calls for direct action to confront them has been myopic.

Racism will only be destroyed through a change in society, not with physical force, nor with laws. The Prevention of Terrorism Act has done little to prevent the continuance of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. At the most, a ban on extreme-right groups will only make them martyrs in the cause of free speech and bring right-wing thugs flocking in to swell their ranks.

Racism has to be seen for what it is — a parasite on the back of nationalism, which is itself a disease of world capitalism. 

Bernard Crick puts forward the view that:

“racialism is not necessarily connected with nationalism, they are indeed formally opposed. Racialism is a myth of the body whose mode of expression is pseudo-scientific, nationalism is a myth of the mind whose mode of expression is cultural and historical” (In Defence of Politics, 1992, p.83).

It is a truism that not all nationalists are racists, and a paradox that xenophobia can exist without nationalism, as Crick points out. The task for socialists in their argument with racists is to convince them that workers have no nation and that there is more that unites the exploited members of the human race, all of whom have the same basic needs, than can ever divide us culturally or historically.

Racist ideas are a manifestation of capitalism in crisis, and will only be eradicated when the capitalist system itself is expunged — not through physical violence or laws, but by workers taking control of their own destiny, becoming conscious of their position in the relations of production and by democratically establishing a socialist society.

John Bissett

Talking About Race (2018)

Book Review from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. by Reni Eddo-Lodge (Bloomsbury. £8.99.)

Most people will be familiar with the idea of institutional racism, whereby some organisation (the police, maybe) discriminates against part of the population on ethnic grounds. Eddo-Lodge widens this to the concept of structural racism, which goes far beyond traditional institutions to cover much of society: ‘It is not just about personal prejudice, but the collective effects of bias.’ 

 So black children do less well at school and are more likely than the general school population to be permanently excluded. Black university students are more likely than others to receive the lowest grade of degree. This discrimination continues into employment, with higher rates of unemployment among black people. Research has shown that applicants with African- or Asian-sounding names are less likely to be invited for a job interview. In contrast is white privilege: ‘if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way.’ 

 The author also deals with the concept of intersectionality, which may involve black women being subjected to two kinds of discrimination, racism and sexism. Some object to this as a piece of useless jargon, while Eddo-Lodge sees the backlash against it as ‘white feminism in action’, which claims not to see race but in fact positions whiteness as the norm. Feminism, she says, should not leave anyone behind, and the most popular current versions of feminism may not able to achieve this. 

 A chapter on race and class sounds as if it might be interesting. It starts off by considering the Marxist analysis of class, but completely misunderstands this by saying that, if you are paid monthly and own your own home, you are middle class. But then it adopts the seven-class analysis of the Great British Class Survey, with black people mainly found in the more impoverished groups. The author says: ‘if you are born not white in this country, you probably haven’t been born into wealth.’ But this misses the obvious point that the vast majority of the population are not born into wealth. There is nothing here about the capitalists and the privileges they and their children enjoy.

 Eddo-Lodge records that when she gave a talk about racism at a sixth-form college, one (white) girl asked, ‘When do you think we’ll get to an end point?’. Her response is that you cannot skip to the end point without having the difficult conversation first. But this is a very unsatisfying dismissal, and it is not even clear what she means by skipping to the end point. After all, you have to have an idea of what to aim for before having the difficult conversations that will help to get you there.

There is no doubt that racism is an important part of current British capitalism. This book says a great deal about how this plays out, but it does not go far in criticising the whole system.

Paul Bennett