When the bough breaks (1985)

From the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dismal roll-call of children who have been battered and tortured to death by their parents has recently had some well-publicised names added to it. With the trials and sentences of the batterers complete, the next stage is the process known as An Enquiry. which should more properly be called How To Make (almost) Everyone Happy By Missing The Point. These cases of child abuse did not appear unexpectedly out of happy, united homes; in each case the child was imprisoned in what is known, in the Town Halls of this country, as a Problem Family, which usually means that a local authority social worker had the job of keeping a protective eye on the child. And that, of course, means that when the child's miserably agonising death revealed too late that all was not well there were, in the personal shape of the social worker and the bureaucratic shape of the local Social Services Department. some scapegoats conveniently to hand. In the popular press social workers now rate, in the league table of denunciation. a little above football hooligans and a long way below professional killers in the armed forces and social and economic parasites like Princess Michael. The press love cases of child abuse for the copy they provide; nothing sells newspapers like an apparent official malfunction which can be given an indignantly human angle in two-inch front page type. Then everyone — the judges, the politicians, the media hawks, the Sun readers — can feel better, provided they can forget the fact that nothing has effectively been done about an extremely nasty problem.

Given the essentially defenceless appeal of a child, it would be strange if cases of battering did not arouse some powerful emotions. The media exploits these responses with demands for vengeance plastered up with some sort of assurances that something will be done to prevent it happening again Racist mumblings were also heard when two of the recent cases — Jasmine Beckford and Tyra Henry — involved black parents but there is no evidence that a coloured skin makes for a neglecting, violent parent. A few days later a white mother was given life imprisonment for the murder of her white child and one of the most notorious cases of recent years, which resulted in the establishment of a set of rules for social workers, police officers, doctors and the like, was that of Maria Colwell, a white child who was beaten to death by her white stepfather. If there were a disproportionate incidence of child abuse in black families it would be readily explicable by the extra dimension of social alienation in their overall poverty — which makes a useful starting point in any discussion of the subject.

The cry for revenge on the child batterer is answered — perhaps if there is enough public interest in the case — with long prison sentences. Punishment does not end in the court room, for it is no ghoulish myth that violent treatment is meted out by other prisoners — female as well as male — to anyone convicted of such offences. The people who were sent to prison in the cases of Jasmine Beckford. Tyra Henry and Christopher Stock will probably count themselves lucky if they complete their sentences in undisturbed isolation behind a locked cell door. Of course the prisoners are not supposed to take matters into their own hands in this way — in fact officially they don't — but they probably need some reassurance that, no matter what they have done to get themselves into prison, there are others who are held in even lower esteem.

It is, after all, a relief to have a scapegoat to ease any nagging doubt about where the responsibility lies for a situation too stressful to be openly faced. Sometimes a family needs the common cause of a sick or wayward child to plaster it into unity; in the same way this society needs its deviants and criminals to provide a diversionary explanation for its inherent inadequacies. The parents of a battered child fall easily into that role and close after them are the people who in many cases have legal parentage — the local authority social workers. It is not unknown for social workers to be custom-built for the type of media assassination which is based on professed outrage at the alleged laxity of present day morality. Many are comparatively young, recently qualified, female and single, with no experience of parenthood themselves. In the case of Jasmine Beckford there was something else, an added piquancy — the social workers came from abroad.

Whatever impression may be gained from the columns of the gutter press, the life of a social worker is not all drinking coffee, sitting in at long meetings and composing jargon-laden casework assessments. When they are involved in child care cases they are immediately faced with a dilemma. The parental rights which have passed to the local authority, and which the social worker is paid to administer, are in conflict with capitalism's concept of the family, in which parents have not only the obligation to raise their children into profit-making members of the working class but also some rights of possession over them. This ideology has its own mystique and when a child is taken into care it is usually on the assumption that it would be healthier, and that the case could be closed, if it were eventually returned to its parents. This course often involves a risk, which the social worker is not always discouraged from taking although of course the real risk-taker is the child, who rarely has any say in the matter.

This illustrates another dilemma of social work, which is that its function is to reconcile people to the irreconcilable. Members of the working class — those who depend on employment for their living must endure varying degrees of deprivation which, if they become identified as social casualties by falling sick or getting old or simply being inadequate. spiral down into destitution. Social workers move among the most serious casualties to bandage them up and send them back into the fray, which rarely means anything more hopeful than returning them to the conditions which they were originally unable to cope with. For social workers and their clients, progress is often measured in the ability to pay all the bills out of a state benefit giro, to learn the knack of survival almost like Royal Marine Commandos on an endurance exercise in the wilderness. Social workers operate at the sharp end of poverty; their working life is largely a succession of slums, malnutrition, mental and physical disablement, social conflict. To come through it they need to be like commandos themselves, especially as their wilderness becomes more threatening under the government's policy of spending cuts.

And that brings us to the question of what the scapegoats are protecting the rest from. Child abuse existed a long time before the first lady social worker ventured a sensibly shod foot into a graffitied council estate. It has not been unknown in the ruling class. In the late nineteenth century the wife of the ninth Earl of Carlisle, whose home was at Castle Howard, bore eleven children and then, with her fanaticism and antagonism, drove them all away from home; two became alcoholics and all five sons came to an early death. The future twelfth Duke of Bedford was made to stand silently on one side while his parents ate. until his father dismissed him; he later committed suicide, like another of that dynasty of disturbed, unhappy people. There is some evidence that child cruelty is a repetitive problem, passed from one generation to another. As an article in Community Care (27 June 1985) said: "So many awful things may have happened to the parents that emotionally they are still children". A 1973 study Born To Fail (National Children's Bureau) — showed how some children were born into conditions of social adversity which affected every aspect of their health, family relationships and education. Another, similar investigation published in 1982 followed up this work with conclusions no more optimistic. One common result is that:

Many of the families have not been able to remain together through their difficulties and the children have been received into care of the local authority. (Children In Adversity, Peter Wedge and Juliet Essen.)

So it was not surprising when the NSPCC recently stated that there is a connection between the increase in unemployment and that of child abuse. Poverty pressure is very destructive of human relationships; the Marriage Guidance Council believes that unemployment puts an extra strain on marriages already in difficulties; two specialists at a Glasgow hospital have reported that children in the deprived districts of that city are up to 100 times more likely to suffer diseases serious enough to need hospital treatment; the Nuffield Centre at Leeds University has said that the evidence of a link between unemployment and suicide is "overwhelming".

Families which are sick, worried, sliding into the sort of desperation with which unemployment flavours their normal poverty are not serene, optimistic, healthy and they are therefore unlikely to be able to deal with what are accurately called the everyday problems of life. Accurate because under capitalism life for the vast majority of people is not an experience of joy or fulfilment but a grinding problem which they face every day. One of the sharpest elements of stress in a suffering family is its children, who have not yet been conditioned into acceptance of a world where adults have to produce wealth which they can't get at. even though they need it desperately and where a few people can be born into riches beyond measure while millions suffer deprivation. The very dependence of children makes them especially vulnerable to, and expressive of, the stresses of poverty. To an adult who has been driven into a pitch of frustration and an angry cynicism about human interests and safety children are too easy an outlet for despair. Like capitalism's other social problems, child abuse cannot be separated from its context.

What then of the family? Why doesn't it protect a child in peril, rather than acting as its prison and. perhaps, as its execution chamber? The apologists of capitalism tell us that the family is a protective, caring organ (remember the Tory campaign about supposed Victorian morality?). In fact an important part of the family's role under capitalism is to socialise its children to brain-wash them into accepting that, like their parents, one day they too will go out to work to provide for their own family. The child's real talents, its basic emotions, its need for expression, quickly become strait-jacketed into that stifling ideology. In the process the child is taught that its parents should be its protectors and confidantes; but many of them find that working-class existence is no preparation for sensitive parenthood.

What it amounts to is that the family, far from being protective, is perilously fragile When it fails, its very privacy exacerbates the problems, sometimes to the point at which a child is killed amid an angry conspiracy to conceal the awful truth that it was all too predictable and avoidable. This then is a plea for a new look at the problem of child abuse. Not just another solemn enclave of ministers and councillors and managers; a great deal of that went on after Maria Colwell was killed and out of it came an elaborate machinery of consultation and buck-passing which did not save those poor kids who have died recently. Whatever reforms are introduced are overwhelmed by the inhuman crush of capitalism's events.

So this is a plea to the people who suffer the frustrations and indignities of capitalism, who mostly come through heroically but who sometimes lash out blindly in some unspeakable act with such terrible consequences. It is a plea to turn away from scapegoats and towards an examination of this society and at what it does to human beings. It is by our decision, that the world is organised as it is. By our decision we can change it. into a great place to grow up in.

Ivan

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

Murdering the dead (2002)

From the September 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the Socialist Standard went to press, it was confirmed that the two bodies found in a Suffolk field on the weekend of 17 August were those of the missing ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. If this was a normal newspaper or journal, you would now expect us to condemn the outrage, and describe in emotive language how sickened we feel about the death of two innocent children; children who might so easily have been our own. We might even pass judgment on the murderer/s: surely evil bastards, for whom a painful death would be far too kind and humane a punishment. We would, in conclusion, denounce the murders as a crime against humanity, and demand that something be done.

But as the antidote to the capitalist press, we don’t need to state piously what is obvious to absolutely everyone who has even a shred of human feeling left in their bodies. Nor do we need to pretend to have all the answers when no one yet even knows exactly what happened, and therefore what the questions raised actually are. What we can do is say how sickened we feel, not just by their deaths, but by the conditions in which their deaths occurred – the barbaric and violent society we analyse in these pages every month – and the way in which the deaths were covered by the media.

Because the deaths weren’t all bad news. For newspaper editors and their proprietors, for example, they were a godsend. Against the background of the economic crisis where they have been losing advertising revenue, and in the midst of their silly season, here at last was a paper-selling story to fill those pages. And pages and pages. As an added bonus, it was a story that had all the ingredients of a good soap opera. They were just waiting for Morse or Inspector Jack Frost to arrive and clean up the loose ends. Through their repetition of stereotyped plots (the tearful press conference, going live to a reporter standing outside a church where prayers were being said for the families, etc) and its characterisation of villains and victims, the media could organise mass sympathies. It was just like when Diana died – or when Deirdre from Coronation Street was sent to prison.

But the circus was not just for fun and for profit. It served a useful propaganda function too. It helped to work up scapegoats for the fear and anxiety that is part of everyday life for the working class and to make us all paranoid and suspicious of each other. It helped, in other words, to justify those same newspapers’ previously stated attitudes on how to deal with child abuse and crime in general, and to exploit our emotions and fears for their own ends. In the two weeks that the media were devoting page after page to what we should think and how we should feel about this individual tragedy, 40,000 children died of diarrhoea for want of clean water. Add to that those, child or adult, who have died of starvation, say, or in capitalism’s wars, and we can begin to put the media’s concern for children in some sort of perspective.

The tabloid and so-called quality press linked hands to weep their crocodile tears, and offered their analysis and opinion, but this amounted to nothing but an apologia for the murders. After all, they are constantly telling us that brutality and violence are an intrinsic part of the human condition and that there is nothing to be done but more of the same (more prison, more punishment, more death, more violence). Their concern and their eulogies are not touching but revolting. They are not the expression of genuine human warmth and concern, but commodities to be sold for the profit of parasites. As scientific Marxists, we offer only this brief outline of our views for the simple reason that no one yet knows what happened beyond the vaguest details. Most people, of course, from the man on the Clapham omnibus to the hacks of the bourgeois press are already experts on the matter. It should therefore come as no surprise that these commentators, for all their froth and anger, have nothing to offer but their pious hopes, prayers and pathetic demands for a bit more legislation here, a bit more violence there.

The hope is gone. Now anger wells in its place, said the Observer . A similar sentiment was to be found in most of the papers on the weekend that those bodies were found. Actually, we hope that anger does surge in its place. But that anger must be directed where it belongs: against our exploiters, and those who cheat us of the truth with their propaganda lie machine. What outrages us as socialists is the systemic whole of barbarity, of one kind or another, are but an integral part. Others may rightly be angered by these individual acts of murder but, stripped of a proper grasp of their real context, they are left, with former prime minister John Major, condemning a little more and understanding a little less.

Stuart Watkins

Voice From The Back: An Investment Opportunity (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Investment Opportunity 

Many people see the recent rise in foodstuff as an unmitigated disaster. Millions of poor people see it as a potential death sentence, but we live in capitalism and many capitalists see it as an investment opportunity to make huge profits. “Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans. But a few big private investors are starting to make bolder and longer-term bets that the world’s need for food will greatly increase — by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment. One has bought several ethanol plants, Canadian farmland and enough storage space in the Midwest to hold millions of bushels of grain.” (New York Times, 5 June)

Tory Turnaround

The recent increases in oil and food prices combined with the so-called “credit crunch” has led many economists to reconsider their viewpoints, but none more startlingly than that of the Times journalist and arch-conservative William Rees-Mogg. “All serious political analysis has a Marxist element. The core discovery of Karl Marx as a political philosopher was the dominance of economic change in shaping the history of political society.” (Times,12 May)

The Priorities of Capitalism

“A California company will give five dog owners the chance to have a favourite pet genetically copied and brought back to life later this month. BioArts International has arranged an online auction to decide which dog lovers will qualify: at starting bids between $100,000(£51,000) and $180,000.” (New Statesman, 5 June) “Every 17 seconds, a child in the developing world dies from water-related diseases. In around the time it takes you to read this paragraph, someone, somewhere, will die. Everyday, people in the world’s poorest countries face the dilemma of having to trust their health and that of their children to the consequences of drinking water that could kill them. It’s a gamble that often carries a high price – seeing children needlessly dying is simply heartbreaking.” (WaterAid leaflet, June) It says a lot about the priorities of capitalism when WaterAid are asking for £2 a month to help save children and someone can spend £90,000 to clone a pet dog.

This Frightening World

It is always difficult if not impossible to predict where the next international conflict will erupt inside capitalism, but this piece of sabre-rattling by a prominent Israeli politician gives us the heebie-jeebies. “An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks ‘unavoidable’ given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies said on Friday. ‘If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,’ Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. ‘Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable,’ said the former army chief who has also been defense minister.” (Yahoo News, 6 June)

A Murderous Society

There are many examples of how capitalism turns human beings into monstrous creatures, but we doubt if a more extreme example than this could be found. “A woman beat her grandmother to death with a garden spade because she feared her inheritance would be spent on her residential care. Joanne Hussey, 33, has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years for the brutal attack on 77 year old Annie Garbutt. …The jury was told that Mrs Garbutt had the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and it had been recommended she be placed in a home. Her savings of around £250,000 would have been dipped into in order to pay for the cost of her care.” (Daily Telegraph, 11 June)

Voice From The Back: Keep ’em laughing (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep ’em laughing

“ATTITUDE CHANGERS” That’s what we call our irresistible HERMAN™ cartoon posters that will motivate employees to . . .

Show up every day

Show up on time

Turn out better work

At lower cost, too!

. . . instead of laughing at you or your company, they’re laughing at HERMAN. Clement Communications (UK) Ltd.

What a surprise!

Police forces across the country have been taking part in a huge fiddle in which they have pretended to detect tens of thousands of crimes and have wiped from the records a mass of other petty crimes, a Guardian investigation has revealed . . . In some cases the crimes were pure fiction invented simply so that they could be listed as detected. The criminals were virtually guaranteed that they would not be prosecuted. Some of them were rewarded with day trips out of prison, free meals and visits to girl friends. Guardian, 18 March

Still mystified

The combination [of high growth and low inflation] has been called the US economic miracle, and I do not think anyone has put their finger on how it works. One of the main factors is the growing use of technology, which allows companies to keep down costs. Despite the low level of unemployment, at 4.4 percent, there is less security in the jobs market, so wages and inflation are unlikely to rise at a rate that would cause inflation in the economy. Financial Mail on Sunday, 14 March.

Human meat market

Egypt’s prosecutor-general has launched an investigation into claims that 25 children were killed at a shelter for the homeless over a three-month period and their body parts sold to wealthy transplant patients in private hospitals . . . The children, many of them illegitimate, had been abandoned and left to fend for themselves on the streets . . . Both Egypt’s Muslims and Christians frown upon sex outside marriage and newspapers are full of stories of relatives killing women they suspect of being sexually active. Unmarried mothers are often forced to abandon their children out of fear and shame. Guardian, 18 March.  

Couldn’t cope

June Randall, a 25-year-old mother described as “distraught”, went on the run this week after snatching her three children as she visited them. The youngsters, all under six, were living in two foster homes after Miss Randall disappeared for a while last December when the children were living with her. She is thought to have said that she couldn’t cope. She is separated from the children’s father and has abandoned her home. Evening Mail, 26 March.

Expand or bust

Early one morning last week at a City livery hall senior executives from leading multinationals—IBM, British Telecom, Levis and Kodak among them—met to mull over problems they all face in doing business in the 21st century, including how to influence governments. Sinister? Only if you believe the sole purpose of business is to make profits. Here was an intriguing sign of the times. The topic before this group, convened by BT, came from a publication in which chairman, Sir Ian Vallance, proclaimed: “The pursuit of sustainable development is not an option—it is nothing more or less than a necessity for our economic survival.” Guardian, 18 March.

The filthy rich

It was 10 years ago that the Exxon Valdez oil tanker hit rocks in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into pristine waters and devastating wildlife and the local economy . . . only two out of 28 injured species have recovered. Numbers of many species, including killer whales, are still declining. And commercial fishermen are still earning less than in 1989. Things look rosier in the head office of the company responsible for the disaster, Exxon (which trades as Esso in Europe). Last year, the company made more money than any other global corporation–$8.5 bn . . . Exxon can afford to clean up its act, but it chooses not to. A similar disaster could occur at any time. And Exxon is one of the most aggressive lobbyists against effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change. In fact, Esso’s bosses find it convenient to believe that global warming is not taking place, against the views of the vast majority of scientists. Exxon was behind plans, exposed in 1998, for a $6m PR campaign to undermine climate science . . . Esso’s parent company is still shipping oil in the outdated, single-hulled tankers and in the old, leaking Trans-Alaska Pipeline. In the seas between Russian and Japan it is discharging toxic wastes into the sea etc, etc. [The accompanying photograph is of the Exxon Valdez, now refurbished and renamed Sea River Mediterranean, taking on crude oil at Hound Point, South Queensferry.] Glasgow Herald, 24 March.

Red Snapper: Sound bites and unsound nibbles (2005)

The Red Snapper column from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I don’t think we should be battering this subject to death.”

Martin McGuinness to John Humphries, on IRA members who murdered Robert McCartney by, er, battering him to death. BBC Radio 4, March 9, 8.00am.

#    #    #    #

“It will be scrapped. I am determined to ensure that the rights of those who play by the rules are respected.“

Michael Howard on the Human Rights Act, The Guardian, March 19.

#    #    #    #

“People who have been arrested say they’ve been brutalised – the tactics used are beyond belief.“

Dr Rafiullah Bidar, regional director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, on the

treatment of detainess by the US in Afghanistan. Guardian, March 19.

#    #    #    #

 “Afghanistan is being transformed into an enormous US jail.“

Nader Nadery, of the Human Rights Commission. Guardian, March 19.

#    #    #    #

 “One might have expected a little humility from the Bush administration after its destruction and occupation of Iraq.“

Lindsey German, convenor of March 19th’s anti-war protest in London. Independent, March 19.

#    #    #    #

“I’ve not seen anything like this since the Julius Streicher Nazi campaign against Jews.“

Mike Jempson, Mediawise, on The Sun’s recent campaign against Travellers. bbc.co.uk, March 11.

 War on gipsy free-for-all”. The Sun, March 9

#    #    #    #

“The man who gave us the dodgy dossier is now giving us The Big Lie…. The man is rattled.“

Liam Fox, co-chairman of the Tory party, Independent, March 19

Editorial: A woman’s lot (2021)

Editorial from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every so often a terrible event takes place which reveals the inhuman nature of the capitalist system. In May last year, the killing of George Floyd shone a spotlight on the racism inherent in capitalism. On 3 March this year, the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, while she was making her way home from a friend’s house in South London, laid bare the misogyny and sexism that is rife in modern society. This triggered an outpouring of anger among women at what they see as a society that engenders violence directed at them. This anger was further fuelled when the police roughly handled women attending a vigil in Clapham Common on 13 March, and by the revelation that the alleged killer is a serving police officer.

In the UK last year 118 women were murdered by men. The pandemic has witnessed a spike in instances of violent abuses. According to a YouGov poll, 86 percent of young women in the UK have said that they have experienced sexual harassment, with 71 percent of women of any age reporting the same (Four-fifths of young women in the UK have been sexually harassed, survey finds, Guardian, 24 March). There have been rises in the incidence of rape. As the perpetrators are invariably male, the focus has been on male behaviour. So there are suggestions that young boys should be educated at a young age to respect women and girls. The government has proposed sending plain-clothes officers into nightclubs and Jenny Jones of the Green Party advocated a punitive curfew on all men after 6 pm. However, none of these measures address the root of the problem.

If we are to combat misogyny and sexism, we need to look beyond individual male behaviour. With the rise of private property society, descent was traced through the male line, which allowed mainly men to accumulate private wealth and become dominant in the emerging ruling classes. The nuclear family, with the man at its head and the woman’s role mainly as mother and housekeeper, became the basic unit of social organisation. As social production moved away from home-based cottage industries to large-scale industry and manufacturing, women’s social power was further eroded. Although women have made advances in the better-paid ‘professional’ occupations and some have become political leaders, women are still disproportionately employed in the lower-paid and less secure jobs and usually earn less than their male counterparts. Under capitalism, women’s bodies have been sexualised through the pornography industry and are frequently used for the promotion of commercial products.

This does not mean that women and men have interests that are diametrically opposed to each other. On the contrary, working-class women and men have more in common with each other than they do with their counterparts in the capitalist class. They are both exploited by the capitalist system.

Therefore, working-class women and men must work together, not to work for palliative reforms that only treat the symptoms of the problem, but to get rid of the capitalist system altogether and establish socialism, where everyone, regardless of gender, can participate equally. A political movement where women are not treated as equals is not a revolutionary socialist one.

Sting in the Tail: Open Letter (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open Letter

The Scorpion's Nest, 

52 Clapham High Street 

1 February 1991

To David Bellamy,

Botanist and TV Personality 

Dear David,

We read how you told the annual conference of the CBI that, instead of cutting their profits, environmental care could, by using "new technologies", bring them new profits.

Bet this went down well with the manufacturers of the necessary equipment (Mr Heseltine told the conference that the market for this could be worth billions) but possibly the companies you hope will buy it weren’t quite so enthusiastic.

You see, David, capitalism is a very competitive system and every company must keep its costs down even at the expense of the environment. That's why we have pollution but maybe you knew that?

And those profits you spoke so approvingly of, they are the unpaid labour of the useful class In society. It's legal robbery, David, but perhaps you didn’t know that?

Anyway, although we enjoy your TV programmes it's obvious to us that you know more about the environment than you do about the economic laws of capitalism which make such a mess of It.

Words of Wisdom

  "The 1960s were good years for liberalism; a fair amount of money was spent on poverty programs and relatively nothing happened. Enter new leaders and new priorities. Why didn't earlier programs work? Two possibilities are open:

1. We didn't spend enough money, we didn't make sufficient creative efforts, or (and this makes any established leader jittery) we cannot solve these problems without a fundamental social and economic transformation of society; or 2. the programs failed because their recipients are inherently what they are — blaming the victims."

(Stephen Jay Gould in Ever Since Darwin Page 47.)

Dismal Johnny

The press made great play of the different style of government we could expect with the demise of Margaret Thatcher and the advent of John Major.

Mrs Thatcher, it was said, was the hard-edged, no-nonsense type of prime minister while Mr Major would prove to be a decent, compassionate man with a social conscience.

A couple of years ago Mrs Thatcher in one of her photo opportunity visits to the depressed North East of England reprimanded demonstrators and branded the unemployed as "Moaning Minnies". In January Mr Major claimed that such problems as rising unemployment and evictions were being exaggerated by "Dismal Jimmies".

His speech to Newcastle businessmen was made on 8 January. Next morning It was announced that the Ravenscraig Steel Mill In Lanarkshire was to close with the loss of 1,200 Jobs.

Doubtlessly there will be some Moaning Minnies and Dismal Jimmies among the ungrateful families of steel workers who will fall to appreciate the different styles of Thatcher and Major.

Bitter Harvest

George Bush began the year with a visit down-under during which he extolled the "warm kinship" between Americans and Australians.

But when angry Australian farmers demonstrated against US subsidies to American farmers which they claim costs them 1 billion dollars a year in lost overseas markets, the "warm kinship"rapidly cooled.

Bush told the demonstrators:

  While I don't like having to use these remedies, I will safeguard the Interests of American farmers.

The Guardian 3 January 

So free-marketeer Bush defends subsidies to American farmers while at the same time he is bitterly denouncing the EEC for subsidising Its farmers

1992 will provide the usual bumper crop of bare-faced, hypocritical politicians. That is one harvest that never falls!

Hard to Credit

The news that Canada's Labourites, the New Democratic Party, had won the provincial elections In British Columbia was interesting only because the party they ousted was the Social Credit Party.

Social Credit was a 1930's movement whose case was built around the notion that banks "create credit" by lending money they do not have. Why, they argued, shouldn't governments do the same? The resulting increase in purchasing power would bring prosperity, banish slumps, etc.

Parties holding this view sprang up all over the world but although most of them have vanished some modern books on banking and economics still peddle the nonsense that banks lend more than they have, so this unsound theory is still around and not only In Canada.

Still Clueless

Channel Four's "A Week In Politics" (22 December) had four Labour ex-cabinet ministers discussing the problems a Labour government will face if elected. Present were Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Barbara Castle and Merlyn Rees and they went at it with typical sound and fury.

Benn said Labour must "face-down" International finance and not the unions but Healey replied that "excessive union demands" must be resisted and cited some left-wing councils who wore currently doing that.

"Labour should spend its way out of recession" said Benn, but Healey rubbished this and warned that people might have to "make sacrifices". Castle claimed Labour could finance extra spending by cutting ’Tory waste" while Rees urged a return to Keynesian intervention.

So despite the lessons of decades in cabinet and over 100 years as MPs between them, the four still believe, whatever their differences, that Labour can solve capitalism's contradictions. Some people never learn.

Happy Families

The new statistical bulletin Homicide In Scotland 1986 - 90 reveals that of the 589 people accused of killing in Scotland during that period only 193 were strangers to the victims.

A further 271 were lovers, friends or acquaintances of those killed, but the other 125 comprised 45 husbands or wives, 32 sons or daughters, 23 parents, 4 brothers or sisters and 21 other relatives!

So our own families are among the most dangerous people we know and yet capitalism's apologists tell us that the nuclear family "holds together the fabric of society".