The Law and Homosexuality (1966)

From the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the election out of the way, Wolfenden ― or rather his famous report ― may get back into the news again. This document, presented to Parliament in September 1957 after more than three years of painstaking work, called forth at that time a mixed public response of support and violent opposition. The government of the time fairly quickly implemented the committee’s main recommendations on prostitution (incidentally with a resultant increase in call-girls and a more highly organised poncing system), but did not make any move concerning the law on male homosexuality.

Public opinion was against any change, said Home Secretary R. A. Butler in the Commons debate of November 26th, 1958, as if capitalist politicians are not capable of trying to ignore public opinion when they think it will serve their purposes to do so. It is just conceivable that homosexuality could have become an election issue in 1959 but the greater likelihood is that for one reason or another the majority of the government did not favour change, and so the matter was dropped. However, one effect of Wolfenden since then has been to bring this controversial question more into the forum of public discussion ― press, radio and TV ― which has continued on and off ever since.

In May last year, Lord Arran managed to get a second reading in the Lords for his Bill to make private homosexual acts between consenting male adults no longer a criminal offence. But a similar measure introduced into the Commons a fortnight later by Labour MP Leo Abse was defeated, the opposition to it having been led by that self styled guardian of our moral welfare and champion of intolerance Sir Cyril Osborne, Tory MP for Louth. However, not long before the election, a Bill on the same lines was sponsored by the Tory Humphrey Berkeley and managed to survive a second reading.

It seems in fact that parliamentary opinion is turning in favour of changing a law which has not had the intended effect and has, by the very nature of its provisions, proved just about unworkable. And after all, there is nothing which brings capitalist legality into contempt more than an unworkable law. As the Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner, said on the matter:

“As a lawyer, I am prejudiced because I do not like law which cannot be enforced and we cannot ever enforce laws about what people do by consent in private. Those who are caught are the unlucky few.” (Guardian 13.5.65.)

The present set up had its origins in 1885, when during the committee stage of the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, The Liberal MP Labouchère moved his notorious clause creating the new offence between males, whether or not adult, consenting or in private, and by a stroke of the Parliamentary pen, made the lot of the male homosexual less tolerable than it had been for many years. Labouchère’s clause was passed without debate, and became section 11 of the new Act, providing punishments which were savage even by Capitalism’s standards. The maximum penalties still range from a £5 fine for “Bye Law indecencies” to life imprisonment for buggery.

No wonder that furtiveness and secrecy entered the homosexuals life in greater measure ― and there was a still uglier aspect rearing its head. In the storm of controversy that followed the publication of the new regulations, one judge called them “the blackmailer’s charter”, a name which has stuck and which seems to have been justified by subsequent events. Moreover, the dubious conduct of the police in securing some of their convictions has been a source of fierce contention among lawyers ever since. Only in May last year, Montgomery Hyde was citing recent examples of this in a series of articles in The People.

Not always the same attitude towards homosexuality has prevailed. Aymer Roberts says: “As we turn the pages of history we discern alternately the acceptance and admiration of homosexuality and then later its attempted suppression” (Forbidden Freedom). In feudal Britain, there were times when, along with fornication and adultery, sexual inversion was punishable by the most painful death. Indeed, as late as the seventeenth century, Lord Castlehaven was beheaded for it on Tower Hill. Such was the fear expressed through Christian dogma and supported by the church, of any practice which was thought to be a threat to the marriage institution.

The number of male homosexuals in Britain is not precisely known; estimates have varied between 500,000 and one million. But whatever the number, there is no doubt that for many the strain of trying to live within a set of general social rules ― not just the law ― which aim at their rejection, is very great. As Dr. Eustace Chesser has pointed out:

“The sense of guilt and nervous strain felt by many homosexuals today is due largely to social disapproval . . . Public opinion can be as punitive as the law.” (Live and Let Live.)

So the homosexual, it seems, has a difference which rapidly becomes a social handicap, but he is forced to wage a long and not altogether successful battle for society’s acceptance. Hence the mental conflicts, the nervous breakdowns, and sometimes the suicides.

Probably that is why the condition has been thought of as an illness ― two separate states have been confused and placed under one heading, but Wolfenden has rejected such a view, as have many leading medicos. According to Dr. Neustattor for instance, “It is not an illness or a disease . . . but simply a variation.” (Albany Trust Winter Talks, 1962-63). So if it can’t be called an illness, it is hardly a question of “curing” it neither has punishment stamped it out. Hence the proposal once more to bring English law into line with that of other countries, and as far as adults are concerned anyway, leave them well alone.

Nor should we forget that times have changed considerably since Labouchère’s days. It is not without significance that the reformers are anxious to convince people of the usefulness ― potential or otherwise ― of the homosexual to capitalist industry.

“It should not be beyond our capabilities to devise some method of control which will enable each homosexual to lead … a more useful life, and this in the final analysis must be a benefit to the whole community. (Albany Trust Winter Talks. 1962-63.)”

“A substantial minority of men in every class of society, being made free from fear of the criminal law, would be better able to play a constructive part in the life of the community. (Pamphlet by The Homosexual Law Reform Society.)

And of course, this is one of the salient propaganda features of the movement for reform of the law. The reformers want to fit the homosexual into existing society without additional stigma; they do not aim at a basic change in society itself.

The same criticism can be made of all such movements, wherever they are. In his book ‘The Homosexual Revolution’, R. E. L. Masters says that the homosexuals in U.S.A. have managed to start official organisations to voice their grievances and demands for law reform, the main associations being Daughters of Bilitas for women, and The Mattachine Society for men. He alleges that the problems of blackmail, police persecution and harassment, etc., are much greater there than in Britain, which may be the reason for the rise of these more vociferous protective clubs. He gives a list of “the movement’s” demands, which apart from the fact that some people might think them too sweeping, are all aimed at making the homosexual acceptable as a citizen of capitalist society. The very first of these is a plea that “the homosexual, male or female, should be permitted like any other citizen, to serve his or her country as a member of any branch of its armed forces.” (The present U.S. law forbids this.) A doubtful privilege indeed ― losing your life on a battlefield as a result of the very struggles you have waged to make it worth ― living.

When the law is eventually changed, then, a minority will be released from the shadow of vindictive penalties (although only in one provision of Wolfenden is this so; his proposal for the under twenty-ones is that the penalties be retained and in some cases even increased), but this will not be the end of the homosexual’s problems. Apart from the backlog of fear, ignorance and prejudice which will impinge on his life still, the legal change will at most be an offer to absorb him, so to speak, more easily into the present set up. Which will mean, if he is a worker (and most homosexuals certainly are), that the grey day-to-day existence and struggles to make a living will still be there.

Eddie Critchfield

Toying with Soldiers (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the days when she was a member of the Opposition, Barbara Castle made something of a name for herself by launching a crusade for the abolition of the penny charge for ladies' lavatories. In the 1945/50 Parliament, Jimmy Hudson was famous for his passion for temperance reform. More lately, Leo Abse has become well known as an advocate of easier divorce. Thus do Labour Members, who call themselves Socialists, busy themselves with trivial, although newsworthy, adjustments to the capitalist system.

The latest in this undistinguished line is Mrs. Anne Kerr, the Member for Rochester and Chatham, who on July 4 last moved in the House that “. . . the sale, manufacture, import, export and advertisement of war toys in the press and magazines and on television should be banned.”

Now there was once a theory, well favoured among the Left Wing, that the cause of war was to be found in the conspiracies of the great armaments kings. Mrs. Kerr, of course, was only blaming the firms who make toy armaments. Perhaps it was safer that way; she was not, after all, pressing for the abolition of war itself, nor even of the weapons of war—only of plastic toys that go pop and sparkle and rat tat tat.

Predictably, the motion had the Parliamentary correspondents dipping their pens in laughing gas, and provided a golden chance for every amateur psychologist in the Commons. A thinly attended House heard some novel theories on the cause of war and of social violence. Then they threw out the motion and got down to more serious business.

The whole episode was fatuous enough and only deserves any attention because so many of the false ideas MPs proudly paraded are widely held also by the people who vote for them:

Destruction to many people is fun. At a church fete, for example, they will pay sixpence or a shilling to break crockery. (Mr. Tilney).
. . .  a dangerous motion because it opens a door to legislation to control the right of individuals and their children to think. (Mr. Onslow).

The best thing to do here is to begin at the beginning. It seems too obvious, but so many arguments about armaments ignore the fact that they exist only because war is an accepted way of settling society’s disputes. There has been a steady progression of the destructive power and efficiency of weapons; Mrs. Kerr complained about toy “guns, bombs, flame-throwers and booby traps” but these are among the gentler instruments at the disposal of the war makers.

Let us go on and ask why society tolerates the persistence of war. Here we can find a clue in the reply Mrs. Kerr received from Mr. Darling, Minister of State of the Board of Trade, who said that

. . . the United Kingdom toy industry was one of our most flourishing industries and last year exported £16 million worth of toys.
. . . Generally speaking, the Government wanted United Kingdom toys to be sold increasingly overseas . . .  (Daily Telegraph 4/7/67)

Now this does not apply only to toys, of course; there are all sorts of British industries which are exporting their products, and which the government would like to see increase their overseas trade. But the British government is not the only one with this idea, and British industry is not the only one engaged in an export trade. The capitalist world is, in fact, a mass of competing firms, states, combinations of states, all struggling for what in the end they hope will be some sort of economic supremacy. Sometimes this rivalry can be settled by a trade agreement or some other kind of pact. Sometimes it can be settled only by war.

Under capitalism, then, wars are unavoidable — which means that armed forces and weapons are necessary. But if it is all inevitable and necessary to capitalism, it is also extremely unpleasant — terrifying, dirty, obscene, brutalising. What is more natural, then, than that governments should try to hide the truth by embellishing the military man's life with false glamour?

Soldiers, sailors and airmen who do their grisly job efficiently are not simply successful men—capitalist society regards them as heroes. This line is pushed hard by the Services when they are advertising for recruits:

Don’t talk to Peter Cobb about hotted-up Minis. He drives this nuclear submarine. Wouldn’t you like to?

The glamour propaganda is aimed at young people and of course it has its effect on children. A child's life is full of dreams and expectations, most of them modelled on the adult world. If his parents regard a killer in uniform as a hero, the child will do the same-even more so. When a kid is playing soldiers, perhaps with the toys Mrs. Kerr thinks so odious, he is acting out what he hopes will be his heroic future.

But this is not the only aspect of life in which the kids imitate their elders and in which they prepare themselves for growing up under capitalism. The same shops which sell plastic machine guns probably also sell toy Post Offices and shops, Monopoly sets and so on. These games teach children some of the commercial facts of capitalism — that goods are made to be bought and sold, that survival is a matter of making money, that success goes to the man who can pull off the clever deal.

War toys teach children that organised killing and violence is an accepted part of society today. And since this has its roots in the economic basis of capitalism, there are as many objections to the sale of, say, toy money as there can be to the sale of toy flame throwers. Indeed, the fact that a child spends some happy hours picking off his mates with a plastic machine gun does not place him irretrievably on the path of being a military murderer, any more than winning at Monopoly will make him a future property tycoon.

As long as its people are content that it should be so, it is capitalism which maps out their future. The adults of capitalism fight its wars, and support the whole system which gives rise to them. They do this not because when they were children they played with toy soldiers, but because they are misled into believing that capitalism, with its property rights, its economic rivalries, its wars, is the best of all possible human societies.

No capitalist party—certainly not the Labour Party—ever does anything to end this massive and fundamental deception. Let us be kind to Mrs. Kerr and say that she is muddle-headed. But not every M.P. was so blind; the Member for St. Marylebone, for example, was almost caught out in approaching the heart of the problem:

You will not end wars by stopping children playing at soldiers, although you probably would stop children playing at soldiers if you prevented wars.

It is a rather unnerving experience, to be agreeing with Quintin Hogg. It probably won’t happen ever again — but strange things can go on, when fishes fly and forests walk, when there is blood on the moon or the House of Commons tries to put capitalism to rights.

Ivan

Caught In The Act: Breakdown (1989)

The Caught In The Act Column from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Breakdown
When he was a Labour MP Leo Abse was one of the more —how shall we put it — colourful legislators in the — how do they put it — Most Exclusive Club in The World. He was recently shown that he can still make the news by writing a book which purports to give a psycho-analytical explanation for the style in which Margaret Thatcher runs the government of British capitalism.

According to Abse, if we are to understand Thatcher’s abrasive, overbearing and unyielding personality we must refer to her attitude towards her parents. She has fond memories of her father, a dourly religious grocer and council alderman in Grantham, which is reputed to be among the most boring towns in England. The late Alderman Roberts stood for the small shopkeeper's morality of Value for Money, Hard Work and Thrift, and Know Your Place and Keep To It. He had no ambitions to excite anyone; no Leo Abse was he. However he made a deep impression on Thatcher, who is liable to claim that she runs Britain like a corner shop where, if all goes well, we shall eventually be enjoying the finest English cheese, best butter and broken biscuits. In the meantime she has had a tendency to treat her ministers — Francis Pym, Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd, Nigel Lawson — rather like indolent shop assistants or errand boys in a H.G. Wells novel.

Immaculate Conception
But Thatcher shows a different estimation of her mother, who is so pale a shadow in her life that it is almost as if she never existed. Amateur mind benders and shrinks — not to mention those humiliated ministers — may find some amusement in raking over Thatcher's hangups about her ancestry and, such is the situation today, they may like to consider another explanation. It has been obvious for some time that Thatcher thinks herself as a sort of queen. In the aftermath of Lawson's resignation she defended herself with a defiant quote from the Bible: “I am what I am", which could mean that she has risen above royalty into a deity. At this time of year we hear a lot about a child who was supposed to have been born a long time ago and who had a mother but no biological father; his mother was a virgin. The offspring of that unusual and inexplicable event was — so runs the myth — destined to save the world, although from what, how or when have never been made clear. Thatcher likes to behave as if she too is a saviour, at present of Britain and much of Europe but perhaps soon of the entire world. Perhaps the attempted elimination of her mother from her life springs from a desire to be the outcome of a twentieth-century immaculate conception, biologically even more difficult than the one in the Bible, as a prelude to her saving the world from her version of socialism, Neil Kinnock, state controlled industry and the European Monetary System.

That does not seem so far-fetched when we bear in mind other aspects of Thatcher's behaviour. She is known to detest holidays, to need hardly any sleep and recently dismissed the engineering workers' claim for a 35-hour week with the sneer that she often works that many hours over a two day period and then, if need be, does it again over the next two days. Her relaxation seems to be in harassing her ministers and intruding in the details of the work she has delegated to them; she needs to be prime minister, foreign secretary, chancellor of the exchequer and home secretary, as well as queen and god, combined in one frenzied, immaculately conceived person. So there is some restlessness now among the Tory faithful. Some questions about what was once unthinkable — is it the most promising way of assuring the Conservative Party of victory at the next election — which, in the view of all good Tories, amounts to the same thing?

Electric Treatment
The prime minister’s standing has not been improved by the news that she is kept going by taking electrified baths, a therapy administered by a woman in, of all places, Shepherds Bush. Her sycophants, so long buoyed up in arrogant strength, must be wondering what will be revealed next. Will it be furtive visits to a fortune teller, to map out the course of the economy over the next couple of years by spinning out playing cards? On reflection that may not be such a bad idea, for the fact that a “brilliant, brilliant" chancellor like Lawson is unable to prevent economic crises shows how chaotic capitalism is and how unwise it is to rely on the economists and the “experts”, in the Treasury or elsewhere.

And that may be an explanation for what a growing number of people are beginning to see as mental imbalance in the prime minister. Perhaps she really did convince herself that with a mixture of stubbornness. belligerence and browbeating she could personally reshape capitalism on some misconceived principles learned from a blinkered small shopkeeper. The frustration of failing against the inexorable chaos of this social system may have unhinged her, for failure does not become success by pouring ever more energy into the frustration.

Alcoholic Problem
Any anxiety about the nation's affairs being in the hands of an overwrought leader whose judgement becomes increasingly warped through a masochism of effort should be tempered by the fact that Thatcher is not the first politician to show symptoms of instability. There are many, many other examples but for the moment let us consider the late Lord George Brown, who was also famous for his energy and his unmanageable personality. As consolation for his defeat by Harold Wilson in the contest for the Labour leadership, Brown was later put in charge of the Department of Economic Affairs. He would have preferred to be prime minister but his new job was very important because it involved snatching the British economy from the stagnating grip of the Treasury soothsayers and placing it with the DEA, where the crystal balls were specially designed to block off all images other than those of expansion, growth and prosperity. With manic power Brown laboured to set up the new ministry which was to change the face of British capitalism. But the prophets of the DEA could no more do the impossible than could those at the Treasury and the whole idea was quietly abandoned soon after Brown had been reshuffled into Foreign Secretary.

Brown found some release from the frustrations of his job in an industrious consumption of alcohol (what fun Abse would have, musing on the possibilities of an oral fixation and the quest for a mother substitute in the bottle) and when in his cups he was liable to be, well, indiscreet. Apart from his persistent offences against the niceties of protocol at many a ruling class gala event, he was liable to surges of temper and sulks in which he would resign from office on the assumption that nobody would take any notice. But the day came (actually it was at night, when Labour ministers were in panic session, grappling with yet another financial crisis) when, as Wilson had foretold, one of these resignations stuck and Brown awoke to find himself not only hung over but a back bencher again. At which point he forgot his reputation as a right wing defender of all that is normal to capitalism’s property motivated operation and declared that the left had at fast found a leader. Apart from the embarrassment this caused to left wingers, nobody took him seriously and Brown set into decline, ending his days as a less-than-rapturously-welcomed recruit to the SDP.

Sanity?
Any discussion of the apparent madness of some politicians, whatever form it takes, is useful only in so far as it exposes the fact that the “sane" ones are no more effective. If the Labour Party succeed in their efforts to persuade large numbers of workers that the present crises of British capitalism are largely caused by Thatcher’s rampant character a valuable lesson will be missed. The two men who would probably be in charge of the Treasury and economic affairs if there is another Labour government — John Smith and Gordon Brown — have made it quite clear that they offer no policies which are in any significant way alternative to those of Lawson and Major. Another way of saying this is that Smith and Brown are admitting, even before they are in power over British capitalism, that they will fail to control this social system, just as the Tories have failed and as all governments must fail. As these are two "sane" leaders, it is abundantly clear that the only way out of the mess is to summon the electoral equivalent of the men in the white coats.

Ivan