All Coppers are Workers (1971)

From the August 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are the police paragons of virtue or fascist bastards? Certainly they are abused as fascists by many leftists who, with their customary lack of originality, have also seized upon the American term “pigs” which is used endlessly in their various journals such a Red Mole and International Times. At the demonstrations against the Industrial Relations Bill earlier this year, the police were denounced as enemies of the working class and many placards showing a Bobby as “your next personnel manager” were on display.

Is this attitude justified? Of course the police are not in any trade union and they are sometimes seen in conflict with strikers, besides students and other protesters; so how different are policemen from other wage earners in their general outlook?

Obviously, the nature of their job as part of the state machine ensures that the ruling class will try to ensure that the police cannot strike. Add to this the fact that throughout its history many of the force have had a background of military discipline, and the possibility of a police trade union looks bleak indeed. And yet there was such a union – The National Union of Police and Prison Officers, formed in 1913.

Earlier attempts to obtain better pay and conditions through organisation were made in London in 1872 and 1890. Both were quickly crushed by dismissing the men’s spokesmen. However, during World War One the police were no longer well paid in relation to other workers — were even worse off. Cancellation of leave-days plus many other irritations saw the rapid growth of the illegal union with constables Marston and Thiel as Chairman and Provincial Organiser respectively. When the authorities tried the usual victimisation tactics almost the whole of the Metropolitan Police Force, numbering 19,000 men, struck. During the strike pickets clashed with blacklegs and special police, just like other workers in a similar situation.

The authorities, caught unprepared, had to climb down and the men’s demands were met with on important exception — the guarantee of union recognition. Soon after the strike the union claimed it had over 40,000 paying members. In some cities the union was influential in the Police Representation Boards — in Liverpool it was able to have men promoted who had been unfairly passed over. Meantime the authorities were preparing for a showdown and in this they were helped not only by granting better pay and conditions, but by the union leadership which was far too militant for its members.

When the union was outlawed by the Police Act of 1919 a national strike was called despite the fact that less than half the police were members; also, there was no strike fund and no likelihood of support from other unions. This time in London only 1,113 came out, but in Liverpool 932 out of 1,256 struck. Riots took place there in Liverpool, Birkenhead, as looting mobs battled for days with soldiers and specials while a battleship and two destroyers steamed from Scapa Flow to the Mersey. The strike collapsed and every single striker was dismissed, never to be reinstated. For many it meant, besides unemployment, eviction from home and loss of pension. Many who had been opposed to striking nevertheless did so out of loyalty to the union or because they had given their word. Today there are still survivors of this little known episode in working class history who proudly possess a card which proclaims that they are “still on strike” [1].

Nor is the British experience unique. The same things happened in Boston, USA, in 1919 with similar results — all strikers were dismissed. [2] In 1963 the Helsinki police impressed the urgency of their case on the authorities by resigning en masse on the same day! In March this year Paris police stopped work twice on the same day for several hours and distributed leaflets outlining their grievances, amongst which was their dislike of being sent to quell campus disturbances (leftists take note!). Also, many New York police struck for several days last January.

Nowadays the police in Britain, from inspectors to constables, are organised in the Police Federation, formed in 1919. Although forbidden to strike, the Federation negotiates pay and conditions with the authorities in much the same way as a trade union. The separate Scottish Federation has been demanding the right to strike and its secretary, Dan Wilson, commented that the government in refusing this “. . .  are only burying their head in the sand if they deny the police the same rights as other workers . We are, after all , only workers” (Guardian 28/11/70).

So the police record in recognising their class position in society isn’t as bad as some people may think. They have, from time to time, shown considerable courage in the face of tremendous opposition from the authorities — and from public opinion. And their response to attempts by their employers to squeeze extra work from them is the same as that encountered in factory, mine or office. Some years ago when the Chief of Police in New York attempted to increase the men’s productivity, a police captain observed that “The Chief makes the decisions and then the locker room makes decisions.” In short, the men themselves regulate their work rate. 

That policemen regard their work in much the same way as other workers can be seen from the numbers who leave the Force for jobs offering better wages and hours. In harsher times a job in the Force was a sinecure and much sought after, and men were prepared to accept the strict discipline. With the coming of “full employment” after 1945 there was a mass exodus of police into better paid industrial work and they were joined by those police who had been in the armed forces. By 1959 almost as many trained men were leaving as recruits were joining. 25,000 joined between 1960–64 but 17,000 left in the same period. In 1964 seventeen recruits meant a net gain of two. As J.P. Martin and Gail Wilson put it – “For many the police service is no longer a lifetime commitment.” [3]

The argument is often advanced that in the event of a socialist majority attempting to establish Socialism democratically, the police will be used, along with the armed forces, to suppress that majority. This is an argument which assumes that policemen have political and moral ideas which are very different from those of society in general. Stuart Bowes, in his attack on the police [4] supports this view — “Anti-democratic sentiments, pro-fascist sympathies and racialist antipathies are commonly revealed by individual policemen.” Perhaps Bowes hasn’t noticed that the same can be said of other workers too — the dockers and market porters who marched in support of Enoch Powell in 1968 are obvious examples.

Bowes quotes many instances of police attacks on strikers and demonstrators, especially during the Depression years The sad fact is that politically ignorant workers, fearful for their jobs in hard times, will be more inclined to perform despicable acts and obey savage orders. Police brutality during the 20s and 30s can be largely attributed to this, and Bowes has to admit that police violence during the post-war strikes has been little.

Michael Banton, in his book Policeman in the Community, points out that “The policeman obtains public co-operation and enjoys public esteem, because he enforces standards accepted by the community.” In other words, if the police are “pigs” then they are only a reflection of a society of “pigs”: they simply do its bidding. The policeman lives in the community and desires to be part of it and have its respect. He needs, as a social being, the moral support of the community in doing his job and will often disregard the law if it is in conflict with what the community thinks is right. For example, in a society with a high proportion of automobile users like America, the point has been reached where the police often avoid booking for traffic offences because of the loss of respect produced by such action.

The police themselves know the situation. The Federation’s Newsletter has stated that “Without the confidence, approval and support of the public, the police machine as we know it today would become incapable of fulfilling its function . . . the history of the police force shows [that] clearly” Exactly. Imagine how the Royal Ulster Constabulary would fare if it tried to hunt out IRA men in the Republic? Or remember how hopeless was the task of the police in Cyprus and Aden when faced with hostile populations? Anyway, policemen who will draw the line at handing out a traffic ticket because of public disapproval are unlikely to be willing to try quelling a majority determined upon changing society.

Do not misunderstand us about the police: this is not whitewash job. Undoubtedly many policemen have obnoxious Political and Social ideas, and there can be no denying that some of them are prone to use violence. But if they sometimes behave brutally towards students, demonstrators, etc, think how many other workers with all their prejudices would behave towards these, if only they had the policeman’s authority and opportunity.

It is long since time for leftists and radicals to stop being hysterical about the police and to have a saner look at the subject. In the Number 6 issue of Ink, one writer, Peter Laurie, has shown just such a welcome approach when in an article describing his past and present attitudes towards the police, he concludes

“We feel that there are forces of liberation at work in our society and that they are being held up and obstructed by blocks like the police. It seems to me now that the police are no more than an organic expression of the mind of industrialised man : we will not change them until we change the way everyone thinks, until we demolish the great inhuman system that divides us and uses us all”

Could this be the light at the end of the tunnel? Our case is that policemen have much the same attitudes as other workers since they are conditioned by the same economical, social and historical forces operating in society. Eventually, the world’s workers, will respond to capitalism’s inhumanities to the extent that they understand and desire the socialist alternative – production for use and the end of exchange relationships. Then Socialist ideas will be just as prevalent in the minds of any policemen who may still be around. They will be for the revolution, not against it.

Vic Vanni

 

Notes

[1.] For a history of the police strikes of 1918 – 19 see “The Night the Police Went on Strike” by Reynolds and Judge

[2.] "Western Socialist" number 5 1965

[3.] "The Police – A study in Manpower"

[4.] "The Police and Civil Liberties"

Classic Reprint: The last time the police went on strike (2008)

From the February 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

What we said in 1919 about the police unrest and strikes of that time. Ironically today’s demonstrations are organised by the Police Federation, the company union set up in 1919 to stop a real union being organised.

Bobby’s discretion

So, the bobbies have funked it. We are not, for the present, at all events, to be treated to the comic spectacle of strike processions of bluebottles being shepherded through the streets by their own blacklegs, the “specials.” The world has lost an entertainment.

Of course, we are not blind to the difficulties of the policemen’s situation. Their bosses had got the strangle-hold on them. By the simple expedient of stopping sixpence in the pound of their wages, confiscating their fees for the service of summons, and in other dubious ways, the capitalists provide a pensions fund at poor Looby’s expense. The loss of this pension, together with the “sack,” is the first threat the bosses hold over the bobbies’ heads. Bobby is a man with no other trade in his hands in the vast majority of cases. So the threat of losing a regular job has special terrors for him. In addition, the loss of his pension—a pension designed, as most pensions are, to get a disciplinary grip upon the subject which probably no other expedient possible in a “free country” could afford, is a prospect requiring a quite uncommon type of mind to withstand.

The bosses, of course, played the game for all it was worth. They said they were flooded with applications from soldiers and ex-soldiers to take the policemen’s jobs. They also talked loudly but vaguely about the arrangements that were being made to meet Buttons’ grievances. It was the old game of bribe some and threaten others—the game played from the beginning to the end of the recruiting for the war—the game played to kill the demobilisation trouble after the Armistice. As, in the earlier case, the single and the young were promised jobs and preferment if they enlisted, and the married and the older ones were threatened that they would have to go if they did shove the others in; as, later, the older men were promised early demobilisation if they kept quiet, and detention till the last if they did not, while the younger men were soothed with extra money, so the older policemen were threatened more particularly with the loss of all that was so nearly won, while the younger men were soothed with promised improvements in the longer road before them.

Meanwhile the policemen played their cards just about as badly as they could. They have climbed down under threats—than which hardly anything could more completely have exposed their weakness and fear. Added to this they have climbed down before their bosses had committed themselves to the vaguely talked-of concessions, and in face of this confession of funk and weakness those concessions are going to shrivel up considerably. The bosses have found out all they wanted to know—that the reward they are offering their bulldogs is sufficient to secure their allegiance to their odious duties. If they dare not decline those duties for themselves they can never dare to decline to perform them for others. So, when labour troubles come Bobby will not, the masters are assured, be a trade unionist, and they have secured this, thanks to their cunning, at about the lowest possible price.

The Daily Chronicle in its issue of June 2 tries to point out to the policemen why the Government can never recognise the Police Union, and, as usual, it reveals only half the truth. “The police exist,” our contemporary says, “to support the State. That is what they are for. . . They cannot strike and agitate, or even become public politicians, without ceasing to be policemen.” Which is true enough as far as it goes, but does not dispose of the not unimportant fact that the policeman is so essentially a member of the exploited class that he cannot get his admitted grievances redressed until he threatens to cease to be a policeman.

The more important matter, however, is the statement that a policeman is only such to support the State. The complement of this half truth is, of course, that the State is only an instrument for keeping the workers in subjection. Directly this position is realised it becomes obvious how far the police are from getting recognition for any police union that could possibly link them with the unions of the industrial world. The position of police force affiliated with the industrial trade unions would indeed be a tragic one in a time of strife. This the bosses have sense enough to perceive, if the underlings have not. And it is for this reason rather than that they are afraid of being dictated to by the men that the Government will never recognise the Police Union.

It was probably a lie that the police authorities are inundated with blackleg applications from soldiers, but the capitalists have a deep pocket, and, as long as their control of the instrument of the State lasts will have no serious difficulty in obtaining men who will carry out their behests. It is simply a question of the price.

The only thing that can deliver the policeman—as the rest of us— from the tyranny of his tormentors is for the working class to assume control of the State, and to use its forces, including the police, to abolish capitalism and establish the Socialist Commonwealth.

(editorial, Socialist Standard, June 1919)

 

The police v. the police

The capitalist Press has been busy explaining to Simple Simon that the action of the police in “breaking their oath” is not only mutiny, but “a crime.” Of course, it is always a crime when the bulldog turns and rends its master’s hand, notwithstanding that that hand was doing things with a stick. But there is another side to the question.

During the long period when the workers were more somnolent than they are now, and that condition was reflected in a far more incomplete organisation and a far greater trust in and submission to their union officials, the bosses were not so much afraid of the “labour unrest” as they are to-day. Consequently they did not attach the same importance to the bobby as they do now, and they made the mistake of paying him accordingly.

The result was inevitable. Notwithstanding his oath, the policeman was forced to struggle for a betterment of his miserable condition. More even than in other trades—if that were possible—this necessarily meant organisation. A union was formed, and as the aspect of industrial affairs became darker, a police trade union, affiliated possibly with other trade unions, deriving a certain amount of its strength from those unions, was regarded as an extremely sinister thing.

The bosses got a bit nervous. They made panic concessions, and then they started to cut out the “cancer”—in other words, to smash the union.

Now it is quite clear that the men owed every jot and tittle of the improvement in their condition to the union. Their oath availed them nothing. It was only intended to bind them to vile conditions of pay and tyrannical discipline. They might have stood meekly by it till doomsday, nothing would have been done for them. Only when they seriously threatened to commit the “crime” of leaving their oath to look after itself, as butcher Asquith did his registration and other pledges, and Lloyd George did his pledge concerning sending young boys to the “front,” did the masters deign to give them some measure of alleviation.

It is quite plain, then, where the crime comes in. It is certainly not in breaking their oath, which they had been driven to do by the callous indifference of the bosses to their claims, but in their desertion of the instrument which had gained them so much. To allow that to be crushed out, and those who had undertaken the task of organising them for the struggle, to go down in the hour of victory is both a mean and cowardly crime.

Writers in this paper have previously pointed out how extremely unlikely it was that any sort of union that could be any good to the men would secure official recognition. The forecast seems to be pretty correct. Had the police, however, behaved with sufficient courage and intelligence as to force the question of recognition to a successful issue, the simple and inevitable result must have been the increased use of bayonets instead of batons in industrial disputes. The masters have more strings than one to their bow.

A. E. Jacomb

(Socialist Standard, August 1919).

Letters: CND’s weaknesses (2008)

Letters to the Editors from the April 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

CND’s weaknesses

Dear Editors,

As a former ban-the-bomber I would like to make a few points regarding CND (Socialist Standard March)

1. Its original appeal was rather insular, asking the government to set a moral example and give a lead to the rest of the non-nuclear world—“Let Britain show the way”.
2. It recognised that it would seem completely unrealistic to demand unilateral action from either of the two great nuclear powers. Much more reasonable to seek to prevent nuclear possession spreading—those who do not have them should not make them.
3. The Labour Party leader Gaitskell and others (and the media) consistently and quite knowingly mis-stated the CND policy as: “Asking ‘the West’ to disarm.” Which it never did—urging ‘multilateral’ agreement and reductions by means of various treaties.
4. CND sometimes made ludicrous claims that it influenced Test Ban agreements etc. All Test Bans or Weapons Limitation treaties were concluded when (a) Testing was no longer deemed essential or (b) when the warheads to be scrapped had been rendered out of date or no longer necessary as technology enabled the production of smaller, but more accurate and effective, weapons and delivery.
5. Significantly, CND support in the UK began to diminish when it broadened its campaign to oppose all nuclear weapons.
6. Some CND supporters supported the existence of NATO.
7. Some (Stalinists and some Trotskyists etc) members of CND did want ‘one-sided’ disarmament and were staunch supporters of the “workers’” bomb.
8. Some ‘Communists’ did have the integrity to oppose capitalist and workers’ bombs.
9. Pacifists (like myself) were a minority in the movement—most accepting that non-nuclear conventional war may sometimes be necessary.
10. “Entryists” did achieve some limited success (certainly temporarily controlling at least one Branch), but they were generally flushed out by the more genuinely radical elements among the membership.

Nevertheless, it would be churlish to ignore the remarkable contribution CND made in raising public awareness of the nuclear issue. Sometimes it is forgotten how deeply limited was the public knowledge of the kind of facts that CND routinely uncovered. Speaking personally, the kind of stuff that I have tried to articulate exposing (in the cause of socialism) the breathtaking hypocrisy of double dealing defence policies of the past and present was spawned by CND. The real disappointment is that comparatively few CND members moved beyond the optimistic (but narrow) objectives embraced by the original policies.

Obviously, the oft repeated claim that “there will not be time” for a deeper objective than nuclear disarmament (I made it myself) has, thankfully, proved to be erroneous.

Richard Headicar, 

Hethersett, Norfolk

Back to basics

Dear Editors ,

Thank you for the comments. I’ll like to respond only to what I think are the main issues raised by Adam Buick’s remarks on my book (Socialist Standard, March). This does not necessarily mean that I am in agreement with him over other things that I do not take up here.

(1) The Speenhamland system is about as similar to Basic Income (BI) as en egg is to a chestnut. We are more than two hundred years on from that agrarian economy. Moreover, Speenhamland was a conditional system and BI is, by definition, unconditional. Criticisms of a conditional system can hardly be applied to a system that is unconditional per excellence.

(2) The objection at the core of the whole article, that BI “would be a wage subsidy to employers” is rather odd. If the law prohibits employers from paying less than a Minimum Wage, as happens in many countries, the argument sinks all by itself without any extra help. Some trade unions are more than aware of this and, for example, the ESK (Basque Union Group) have been BI supporters for some time now.

(3) The author’s views that a BI would be a “wage subsidy to employers” without taking into account the economic forces of the time and without bothering to look into what effects a BI might have on the working class are not only more-than-dubiously based in historical terms but he also seems to be arguing as if the only decision-maker is the management. But aren’t management wishes conditioned in any way by resistance from the workers? According to this line of argument, one might almost deduce that the workers shouldn’t engage in too many distracting struggles to improve their conditions because the minute a bad economic situation comes along the management will take away what they’ve won previously. This is an odd way of understanding things.

(4) Have you pondered how a BI might affect the sector of the working class that is subject to the more precarious form of contract (about 40 percent of the workers in my country, Catalonia)? I’ve seen in the talks I’ve given over the years that, when the public consists in particular of very young workers, BI is understood as a measure that would help them to avoid accepting the very bad and insecure working conditions they’re obliged to accept at present. A BI would give them the chance to say “no” to job situations that they have to agree to now. Have you wondered how a BI might affect a lot of women who depend economically on their husbands? Have you really thought about the possibilities for workers’ protests that a BI could offer as a resistance fund? In general, the right immediately grasps the whole potential of BI and is therefore totally against it (as the debate in the Spanish Parliament revealed on 2 October 2007). The left, at least part of the left, has more problems in understanding of the whole potential a BI could have for a good part of the working class. It’s a shame, but that’s how things are.

Daniel Raventós (by email)

Reply:

We can’t see how, given the way that capitalism works, a state payment, whether conditional or unconditional, to all workers is not going to end up being a wage subsidy to employers. It is bound to upset the labour market by setting in motion downward pressures on wages and salaries. Of course workers, through their unions, should resist such pressures (as they always should), but the employers’ trump card is going to be “Look, your members are not going to be worse off, since their total income from us and the state is going to be more or less the same”. In other words, a Basic Income scheme would not make workers better off in terms of money income; it would just be a more or less neutral “reorganisation of poverty”. Surely you don’t think that if BI was fixed at even as low as £5000 a year workers would be better off by that amount? Or that employers could be prevented by law from taking this payment into account when fixing or negotiating the wages they pay?

Yes, we are aware of the benefits that are claimed for BI and they sound alright. But excuse us if we are rather sceptical as we’ve heard claims of this sort made for many reforms of capitalism (including for family allowances, which the advocates of BI now want to replace by their scheme). The fact is that, while workers can obtain some improvements under capitalism, capitalism itself cannot be permanently reformed so as to work in the interest of wage and salary workers. At the present time, with the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, any reform that will cost more money is not likely to pass anyway. Much better, then, that workers should go for the bakery rather than a few more, perhaps unobtainable, crumbs – socialism rather than a reform to capitalism. 

Editors.

Police strikes

Dear Editors,

Many thanks for forwarding on the article from the Socialist Standard (January) about the last, failed, police strike. I’m sure many of the officers who heeded the old Police Union’s strike call would have agreed with the sentiment – although I’m not sure history has necessary proved it true.

One thing that the article does not reflect is the police’s reluctance, as true now as it was then, to have to resort to this final exercise of industrial action.

Communications Department, Police Federation of England and Wales

Bobby bribed. (1919)

From the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bobby Bluebottle, then, is to receive £3 10s. a week and upwards, with other advantages. The news comes as a bit of a surprise. It shows that the master class got a nasty jolt when they found their bull-dogs organising with the other workers. Therefore, having tried bullying with indifferent result, they now resort to bribery.

It says a great deal for the work our bosses expect to call upon the police perform, that they should offer them such money. Taking this in conjunction with their recent attempt to find out how far the soldiers were prepared to deal [with] strikers, it gives warning we will do well to heed.

Be prepared.

J.

Blogger's Note:

See also

May 1919: May-Day Talk. 

June 1919: Bobby's Discretion 

August 1919: The Police v. The Police 

Editorial: May-Day Talk. (1919)

Editorial from the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the eve of May-day, in probably the most momentous times in history, it is meet that we should have a glance about us, a little stock-taking, a summing-up of the general situation as it affects "Labour," and as viewed through the eyes of those who have made a special study of the needs and interests of the working class over many years.

Our masters are talking now of peace. But what significance has such a word for those— we were going to say who work, but we must use the more expressive term—who toil ? During the great "Business War" the horrors of the industrial strife have been largely removed to the military cockpits. The burying alive of men in mines has found its counterpart in the burying alive of men in trenches ; the gassing of men in the bleaching powder factories has been paraleled in the gassing of men at "the front" ; the tragedy of the Titanic has been reproduced in the "atrocity" of the Lusitania; the crime of the abolition of the Plimsoll line has found its twin brother in the villiany of mined seas. These things, done in "war," and between race and race, have attracted to themselves tense attention, but there is nothing, nothing, in the whole range of battlefield horrors, that is not matched in the everyday struggle of the workers for bread and of the masters for profit, an almost common-place occurrence of toe everyday existence of those who toil.

And now we are to exchange again the horrors of war for the sevenfold horrors of peace. Our masters' "gratitude" to their "heroes" has already reached the vanishing point. In little open spaces in the London suburbs, and on the ugly blank walls of London slums, ugly little wooden shrines have been erected to the "honour" of those same "heroes"—the cheapest of cheap carpenter's jobs, but neatly varnished and glazed, and "eye-washed" with a picture of Christ or a Mons angel looking upon cannon fodder, and provided with a shelf for other people to leave floral offerings on. And inscribed upon the page of fame behind the glass behold the names of the local warriors, with here and there blank spaces where the names of the fallen had been written in in red ink, and have long since faded from the sight of man. The symbolism of the whole thing is perfect. The shoddy show, the superstitious dope, the appeal to private charity—and nothing could better have stood for the transient nature of capitalist "gratitude" than that ironic, contemptuous, fleeting red ink.

The "gratitude" of the class for whom the war was "fought and won" is already dead. The Lord Derbies, who sweated so profusely in the khaki of the labour battalion, are, it is true, now "hard at it" on the work of reconstructing—the Turf. The rich find no great problem (for themselves) in the transition from war to peace. But in other directions the work of "reconstruction" goes on about as fast, probably, as those to whom a great unemployment crisis would present a welcome opportunity to put the screw on wages desire. The shortage and consequent high price materials of every description has a fatally deterrent effect on the resumption of the ordinary productive processes of peace time, and this applies with greatest force in that most important industry where the increased cost must be saddled on a relatively permanent product—the house-building industry. There is, therefore, looming ahead, the prospect of such a time of suffering for those who toil as will indeed cause them to ask themselves what signify those little wooden shrines to working-class agony and capitalist greed.

The vampire class are getting ready for the inevitable result of the world conflict. Already the chiefs among the thugs are denouncing the victims of their blood-orgy who have the indecency to claim the out-of-work dole as lazy impostors. Pledges are being given by the Government, who got their present places and power upon lying promises to carry the working-class safely through the "transition period," that those doles (already reduced to ludicrous inadequacy) will cease to be paid in November. The Army is being strengthened with men whose pay is sufficient to claim their heartfelt allegiance to any duty; the police are having their grievances settled with a lavishness that is eloquent testimony to their future usefulness to the exploiting class. "Public opinion" has been sounded on and broken to the patrol of "tanks," armed against the workers, through "our" city streets, and the filling of "our" municipal buildings with soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets and machine guns and bombs. Oh, yes, the masters have made their preparations.

And how about the workers ? What will they do when desperation seizes them ? In what direction will they seek surcease of their torment when they find themselves workless and wage-less in the face of high prices ? If failure has not utterly discredited Bolshevism by that time there will doubtless not be lacking those in this country those who will make an attempt to lure the desperate into "living dangerously" in the Bolshevik way. Soldiers returned from hell to find themselves displaced by women or supplanted by machinery, to learn that all they have suffered for is the right to starve, and used as they are to reckless and violent methods, may prove to be fertile ground for such appeal to fall on. A rude awakening awaits those who participate in any such attempt.

There is only one remedy for working-class misery and that is to overthrow the present social system, based upon the private ownership of the means of living, and to set up in its stead a system based upon the common ownership of those things. Since this involves the abolition of the capitalist claes, they will certainly resist it to the utmost extremity of their power. They who have hurled millions of their slaves to death in a mere trade squabble would turn the very world into a charnel house to maintain their robber privileges. Hence the essential first step in the working-class revolt is for the toilers to get control of the armed forces of the nation. These armed forces, as we are continually pointing out, are controlled by Parliament. It is therefore necessary for the workers to organise in a political party for the capture through the ballot of the Parliament. When they have captured this capitalist stronghold they will have control of the machinery of government, and will be able to proceed to their emancipation secure in the control of the means of dealing with any capitalist rebellion.

Such political party already exists in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The S.P.G.B., is founded upon sound principles, principles which have stood the searching test of the last five years, and have proved sufficient to keep the organisation true to working-class interests. Those principles are set out on the back page of every issue of this journal. We invite every working man and woman to study them in a critical, a challenging spirit, and to proclaim any flaw he or she may find in them. If they are sound the worker's duty is dear.

From America: Those good old “Good as Gold” dollars (1978)

Letter From America from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

One question agitating Americans today, as much as any other, is: what has gone wrong with the US dollar in world markets? How does one explain the acute illness of this proud currency, the money that was almost thought to be as good as gold? Because it has made front page news in America in recent times and seems to be getting no better fast, even people who never have much of it, are worried and somewhat crestfallen. There was always that vicarious thrill in knowing that “our” money was so universally venerated. What’s it all about?

The answer, in a word, is “pollution”. There are far too many US dollars held by financial and multinational institutions around the world. “No need to redeem them for gold”, was the assurance when the blizzard of US currency hit Europe in the 60s. “They’re as good as gold”. (Not that there was that much gold in the US Treasury but there was always America’s strong trading ability to bank on). And the quantity of US dollars in foreign hands, today, is out of all proportion to what is needed to consummate the trade that American capitalism can generate.

And thereby hangs another tale because, in theory, devaluation of a nation’s currency is supposed to bring increased trade for that nation’s exporters and this is not happening here. The adverse trade balance remains maddeningly huge and sharp debate concerning its causes is stirred among the “doctors” of economics. But whatever else may be involved, the fact is that this once top manufacturing nation is feeling the competition from an assortment of relatively vibrant economies in Europe and the Orient with more modern plant, equipment, and marketing “know-how”. Those “good-as-gold” US dollars in foreign hands have become so many not-so-hot IOUs and heavy holders are trying to get out from under by changing them into Japanese yen and Swiss francs rather than trading them for US goods.

The truth is that the US dollar has not been “as good as gold” for a long time. In fact, the Nixon Administration, in 1971, officially untied the dollar from gold and declared it as inconvertible to bullion everywhere, as it had been domestically since the first term of Franklin Roosevelt some forty-five years ago. So, while in those years following the Nixon action the dollar remained relatively strong and generally acceptable in Western Europe and Japan, propped up by hope, Nemesis was waiting in the wings.

To begin with, money is a commodity. It must be a commodity because it is used as a means of effecting the circulation of and setting a value upon commodities generally. And so, the quantity of paper bills and metal pieces that serve to represent money — gold — must bear a recognisable resemblance to the quantity of real money they represent. Otherwise they would be worth, on the average, the equivalent of the socially necessary labour time required to produce and reproduce them — damned little, indeed! So when paper currency and metal coins are churned out in America’s mints with little regard for actual money stores, eventually the bitter truth must sink into the heads of those who hold huge amounts of the stuff. Especially when it becomes apparent that US industry cannot compete so effectively on world markets.

(Not that this in an unalloyed evil for US capitalism. The Government, for example, wins a large quantity of those devalued dollars when it sells off portions of its gold bullion — the weaker the dollar the costlier the gold in terms of dollars. And since bond holders and other domestic creditors are guaranteed repayment in US dollars with no provision made for devaluation — it becomes a windfall for the capitalist class, as a whole. All big borrowers, in fact, have seldom had it so good although bankers, understandably, are responding by raising their interest rates and are discouraging long-term loans. And currency speculators, as patriotic as the next, no doubt, are making hay out of the difficulties of the American currency).

But what, if anything, does all this signify to US workers? Most of those who travel abroad will find it difficult to survive unless they visit the soft currency nations, where American money is still respected, and even then will find it difficult to live in the manner they have been accustomed to back home. But the over-production of currency in US mints also translates into continuing inflation in this country and while the rate is lower than in the competing nations it is high enough to bring more than the usual clamour by organised labour for substantial pay increases.

And there is at least one significant change about this otherwise predictable happening. A considerable and rising number of those in the forefront of “labour unrest” are public, or government, employees. In fact, the summer and early fall of 1978 seem to have brought a veritable tidal wave of strike action and threatened strike action by policemen, fire fighters, school teachers, transportation workers, postal workers, garbage collectors, and others in “public employ” forbidden by law to strike. Police and fire fighters, bus drivers and school teachers have in many instances gone to gaol for spurning court orders to return to work. And a number of postal workers, along with many of the fire fighters and policemen, have been summarily fired and forever blackballed from employment in those endeavours. (In the case of the postal workers, there is now an imposed settlement by a Government mediator on the cards and the possibility of more wildcatting by disgruntled employees in protest over the loss of ratification rights by the union membership).

What makes this current trend more interesting is that “public employees” are paid entirely out of tax revenue. The basic arguments of managements of such enterprises are: (1) we can’t find the money without a tax increase and nobody wants that, or (2) we must not make a settlement that is inflationary. A majority of those directly involved are doubtless unwilling to accept such reasoning, but since the majority of the working class believes it pays taxes and will have to foot the added bill, general support for such strikes is uncommon.

In truth, taxes come from surplus value, which is the property of the capitalist class. Certainly it adds to inflation when increases are paid by printing added currency. But there is no law that forbids the capitalists from taking less profit and assigning more of surplus value to those who operate their essential services — no law, that is, but the jungle law of capitalism ordaining that capitalists must strive for greater rather than lesser profit or be destroyed by competition.

Socialists find it worthy of note that public employees, even school teachers and police, now seem to identify more with their fellow workers than once was the case. And yet we hesitate to see the millenium resulting from it. Our pleasure is tempered sharply by the knowledge, gained through long years of experience, that union militancy does not lead, in itself, to understanding the class nature of capitalism and the need to abolish it. Police, militant or not, return to their jobs of protecting the masters’ property and clubbing other militant workers who threaten or defy the law. “We’re only doing our job!” they argue. Teachers resume their task of preparing future wage slaves for a general acceptance of class society and see nothing objectionable about that. And workers, generally, are content with the gains they make in their wages and conditions of work.

If only inflation would vanish! they reason today, either forgetting or not knowing of those long periods of deflation, when prices fell (including the price of their labour power), when hamburger was a quarter-or-less a pound but quarters were hard to come by, when the American dollar was a good as gold (at least outside the United States) and American industrial superiority was universally recognised. Were American workers better off in those times? If you don’t remember or never knew look it up or ask those who do.

Harry Morrison 

(WSPUS Boston)

The Police: Bourgeoisie’s Boot boys? (2019)

From the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 1984/85 miners’ strike it was the police who were the state’s storm-troopers in its assaults upon strikers. The brutal treatment they dished out to the pickets to intimidate them and their families caused an outcry. It drew attention to the extent that the capitalist class would use the powers of the state to protect its own interests. The criminal law was enthusiastically applied against the miners even though their picketing was not an offence.

Those who have been on a protest march and been on the receiving end of a truncheon will share the same perspective as the persecuted miners, that the police are the hired thugs of our class enemy. The police are a class creation. We should know that the police were created by the ruling class to control the working class, not help them. They’ve continued to play that role ever since. We don’t want better policing. We understand only too well that they do not work for us and they never have. We want to get rid of the police in their current form entirely, and we want to live in a world where a repressive force is not necessary.

Among many communities there exists a lack of confidence in the police and little trust in their accountability. The police have come to be regarded by many on the Left as impermeable to socialist ideas, yet the fact remains, however, that the police are made up of members of the working class who, too, are required to sell their ability to work in whichever way they can. Like any other wage slave, the police have to do what their employers – the state – order them to do. The Socialist Party does not seek to pick on the monkey but targets the organ-grinder. The Left see the police as the enemy, but why single out one section of the working class as the source of our problems? The Left advances the idea that any attempt to establish socialism democratically and peacefully through the constitution will result in the police being used, along with the armed forces, to suppress that movement.

This argument assumes that police have economic and political positions apart from the rest of society and hold pro-fascist sympathies. However, members of the police force usually live in the community and seek its approval and respect and will often turn a blind eye to the law if it is in conflict with what the community thinks is right. For sure, many in the police hold obnoxious political opinions, but consider just how often these reflect the prejudices of other workers. The personal views of the police will not change until the way most people think changes and the indoctrination that many of our fellow-workers have suffered is undone. Our case is that those in the police share much the same attitudes as other workers and when these workers understand and desire the socialist alternative the same ideas will be accepted as much by the police. The police are as susceptible to socialist ideas as any section of our class.

Police strikes

That police are subject to the ideas prevailing in other sections of the working has been illustrated recently in other countries such as Bolivia (2012), Brazil (2008/2013), Argentina (2013), Portugal (2013), Iceland (2015) and Ireland (2016) where police have been protesting against their conditions or going on strike.

We have seen similar occasions even here in the UK. In 2008 and 2012 industrial action of sorts took place when police held protest marches. In 2007 police officers in Britain were banned from taking strike action or even discussing it. However, this year the rank and file voted overwhelmingly to explore the option of lobbying for full industrial rights if their claims were not met. ‘The feedback from our members is that we are rapidly approaching the situation where they want to bite back,’ a spokesperson said. ‘If we are to be treated no differently from other public sector workers, we need to explore whether we should have the same rights as other public sector workers.’

A hundred years ago, in 1919, police shared the heightened discontent of other workers.

In the US, Boston police officers went on strike on 9 September. They sought recognition for their trade union and improvements in wages and working conditions. The strikers were called ‘deserters’ and ‘agents of Lenin.’ All of Boston’s newspapers called it ‘Bolshevistic.’ The police strike ended on 13 September, when Commissioner Curtis announced the replacement of all striking workers with 1,500 new officers, who were given higher wages. The strike proved a setback for labour unions. No police officers in the US went out on strike until July 1974, when some Baltimore police, estimated at 15 to 50 percent of the force, refused to report for work for several days as a demonstration of support for other striking municipal unions.

As mentioned in May’s Socialist Standard, Winnipeg’s City police were supportive of the general strike there and were all dismissed for expressing support and for not signing a loyalty pledge not to take part in the strike.

In Belfast in 1907, the local police had mutinied against their instructions to safely escort blackleg strike-breakers during the dock-workers dispute which then led to their own pay rise demands. But as always there was a high price to be paid for that militancy. When the police union was outlawed by the Police Act of 1919 a national strike was called despite the fact that less than half the police were members. In Liverpool 932 out of 1256 struck. Riots took place where looters fought with soldiers and special constables, while a battleship and two destroyers steamed from Scapa Flow to Merseyside. The strike collapsed and every single striker was dismissed, never to be reinstated. Besides unemployment it meant eviction from a home and loss of pension.

A second police strike started on 31 July, 1919. It was a disaster. Only about 1,000 men struck in London, all of whom were instantly dismissed, and although a bitter struggle continued for some time – for example, strikers broke into the Islington section house to force the inmates to join them, eventually being forcibly ejected – the strike was absolutely crushed, and along with it the Police Union.

There were numerous arrests during the strike, and there were even a couple of sympathetic stoppages – of railwaymen at Nine Elms, and the tube motor men. One other interesting feature of the dispute was when Inspector Dessent of Stoke Newington Station, the only Inspector to strike, formed his men up in a body and marched them to the main strike meeting at Tower Hill.

The sacked men never got their jobs back, but many of them became active in the labour movement. After the defeat, the Herald League’s paper, Rebel, noted a large influx of new members from the Police Union. Tommy Thiel, on whose behalf the first strike had been fought, joined the Communist Party, as did a number of others. A local striker, Henry Goodridge, joined the Labour Party and eventually became Mayor of Hackney. Another Islington man, Sergeant William Sansum, who had been arrested and bound over during the 1919 strike, was arrested again for his support of the General Strike in 1926. Sansum, by this time a boot salesman, got three months in prison.

There had been considerable support for the 1919 strike from the labour movement, but many supporters, looking back on police harassment, or police inaction while they got bashed by jingoes, felt a bit awkward – to put it mildly – with their new allies.

Anti-social behaviour in socialism

If, in a socialist world we do have an organised body akin to the police, then this must be a service working in the interests of the people and be there to protect the people and society against a handful of dangerous individuals, not be there to protect a few individuals against society like the police force which we have under capitalism today.

We don’t take the totally utopian view that there will be no anti-social acts whatsoever and everybody in socialism will be angels. Crimes of passion could still take place. There will still be traffic ‘police’ ensuring safety on the road but it may be undertaken by car break-down rescue or highway maintenance patrols. There may well still be a formal trained organisation for crowd management at public events but they would be more like the stewards we have now. Psychiatric services have certain compulsory powers to prevent self-harm and harm to others for those with mental health problems – those involved can see how their work can be adapted and applied when cost is no longer an issue. Likewise those currently in the prison industry may raise alternative possibilities for those classed as a risk to society but with no treatable psychological disorder. Maybe some council departments will exercise ‘policing’ roles on antisocial behavior, just as they do now by mediating between feuding neighbours or sound abatement complaint squads in regards to noisy partying. Some form of detective/forensic department might well still remain to investigate what antisocial acts occur, but they would be more like accident investigators, sleuths in tracking down the culprit or cause, specialist Sherlocks. Either way, the coercive role of the police would be redundant, and the riot shields and batons would disappear into museums to stand alongside the swords and suits of armour.

ALJO

For a contemporary account of 1919 police strikes, see the June 1919 Socialist Standard:

A Hundred Years Ago: The Winnipeg General Strike (2019)

From the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Winnipeg Strike will go down in history as a magnificent example of working-class solidarity and courage’ (Bill Pritchard).

In February 1919, Seattle workers engaged in the general strike tactic, with 30,000 workers in 130 unions walking out for 5 days in sympathy with 38,000 shipyard workers. The city’s mayor, Ole Hanson, described the strike as an ‘attempted revolution’. A few months after, on 15 May, the Winnipeg general strike took place. It ended on 26 June. As in Seattle, the authorities declared that the Winnipeg general strike the first stage of a revolutionary conspiracy. For six weeks Winnipeg was the scene of a dramatic general strike when, having to endure unemployment, high prices and poor working conditions, workers from both the private and public sectors joined forces. The New York Times headline was ‘Bolshevism invades Canada’. The strikers, however, as in Seattle, sought only the right to collective bargaining and a wage increase. The evidence is overwhelming that the intent was not political revolution, and the great majority of Canadian workers, including most workers in Winnipeg, were not socialists. For most men and women, the Winnipeg General Strike arose from economic inequality that had become too impossible to ignore. Hugh Amos Robson wrote in his 1919 Royal Commission report on the causes of the strike. ‘There has been… an increasing display of carefree, idle luxury and extravagance on one hand, while on the other is intensified deprivation.’

1919 Strike Strike Leader Roger Bray in Victoria Park.

Not a revolution

The immediate reasons for the building trades and metal workers going on strike were for better wages and working conditions, for recognition of their unions and for the principle of collective bargaining. What took place in the city was a historic labour protest and one of the biggest social resistance movements Canada has ever seen. On 1 May, after months of negotiations, building workers went on strike. On 2 May, metalworkers went on strike when the employers refused to negotiate with the union, refusing even to recognise the Metal Trades Council as a legitimate union. On 6 May both unions met with leaders of the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council who agreed to poll its other member unions on the idea of forcing the issues with a general strike. A week later, the final tally was 8,667 for and 645 against. On 15 May workers all over the city walked off their jobs. The women who worked the city’s telephones walked off their shift; nobody came to replace them. Within hours, almost 30,000 workers had joined the strike. It was almost the entire workforce of the city. Delegates elected from each of the unions formed a Central Strike Committee to coordinate on behalf of the workers so as to make sure essential services still operated in the city, such as the initiative to issue licences in order to authorise milk and bread delivery. The real lesson learned was how the workers conducted themselves during the strike. The strike demonstrated that the workers were fully capable of organising the community, and performing the jobs done for the smooth running of society.

But there were elements within the Winnipeg working class that were not sympathetic to the strike. De-mobbed servicemen returned to find many jobs filled by immigrant workers and some expressed a hostility against the presence of these people. Most veterans decided to support the strike, notably the Great War Veterans Association. On 1 June 10,000 veterans marched in solidarity with the strike and they regularly held open-air meetings. However, others formed the Loyalists Veterans’ Association encouraged by the establishment of the Manitoba’s Alien Investigation Board that allowed for immediate deportation of any immigrant deemed to be disloyal or seditious, legislation directly targeted at the immigrant participants in the strike.

There are those who claim that the Winnipeg strike was a revolution that failed as the press and authorities alleged at the time. Yet it was a strike by trade unions for very modest demands who fully understood that any attempt at insurrection would have resulted in failure and bloodshed. Socialism was not on the agenda. No bank closed its doors, and commerce and business carried on practically as normal. The workers were orderly and peaceful, avoiding any excuse which would provoke military force. Essential services were maintained. But the reaction from the employers, city council and the federal government was extreme with the federal government arming a bosses’ militia after the police voiced support for the strikers. The Citizens Committee of 1000, made up of vigilantes of businessmen and politicians, was organised to oppose the strike. It ignored the strikers’ demands and with the assistance of local press accused the strikers of ‘Bolshevism,’ of being ‘enemy aliens’ and of undermining ‘British values’. As the Citizens’ Committee was made up of members of the city’s elite, its motivations for breaking the strike aren’t difficult to see: the strike posed a threat to their businesses, and by defeating the strikers, they would continue to make their profits.

The authorities’ reaction

Federal Minister of Justice Arthur Meighen and Labour Minister Gideon Robertson met with the Citizens Committee which described the situation as a revolution and not a strike, convincing the Federal government that Winnipeg was in a state of rebellion. The ministers refused to meet or negotiate with the Strike Committee. Federal government employees, provincial government employees, and municipal workers were ordered back to work. An amendment to the Immigration Act was rushed through Parliament to allow the deportation of foreign-born strikers and the definition of sedition in the Criminal Code was expanded. The city council outlawed the regular demonstration marches.

Winnipeg’s city police had formed their own union in July 1918 and they officially joined the strike but were advised by the Strike Committee to keep reporting for duty to avoid the city from being placed under martial law. On 19 May Mayor Charles Gray instructed the policemen to sign a pledge not to participate in a sympathy strike. On 30 May the Winnipeg police refused to sign a no-strike agreement. They were all sacked bar 23. An 1,800-man force of Special Constables was hired and deputised to suppress the strike, many of them from the Loyalist Veterans’ Association who were now essentially strike-breaking goons.

At the time of the strike, daily newspapers — the Winnipeg Telegram, the Winnipeg Tribune, and the Manitoba Free Press — were the primary sources of information for the citizens of Winnipeg. The newspapers endeavoured to plant the image in the minds of the general public that the strikers were Bolshevik revolutionaries. The typographers at all three papers walked off the job on 17 May, but by 3 June the newspapers restored their regular distribution and redoubled their condemnation of the strike, misrepresenting the strikers and promoting the idea that the strikers intended to overthrow the government. The articles against the strikers became more strident in a campaign aimed at convincing the public and the world that Winnipeg was about to be taken over by insurrectionists. The Western Labour News was distributed by the Strike Committee to counter the propaganda.

The strike activists were to learn that there would be consequences from their actions. Eight involved in the strike were arrested on 18 July and subsequently brought to trial. A.A. Heaps, Reverend William Ivens, R.E. Bray, George Armstrong, John Queen, R.J. Johns and W.A. Pritchard were jointly charged on six counts of seditious conspiracy.

Bloody Saturday took place on 21 June. 25,000 workers assembled downtown for a planned march. Winnipeg Mayor Charles Gray read the riot act. When the ‘forbidden’ rally began Mayor Gray had at his disposal nearly 2,000 special constables, men from the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP), and General Ketchen’s 800-strong militia along with its armoured car with three machine guns. RNWMP rode into the crowd of strikers, beating them with clubs, and then the Specials followed up, beating protesters with baseball bats and cudgels while the army patrolled the streets. By the time Bloody Saturday was over, one man – Mike Sokolowski – was shot dead and another protestor dying a few days later from his wounds. Many were injured and many arrested. Authorities also shut down the striker’s paper and arrested the editors for commentating on the events of Bloody Saturday.

On 26 June, the strike was called off.

General Strikes as union tactic

The tactic of a general strike keeps returning so we should not be surprised that the Winnipeg Strike will receive the attention of many on the Left who think that a general strike can bring on the social revolution and the fall of the whole capitalist system. The mirage that the general strike is the way to achieve socialism must be rejected. It is impossible for the working class to take and hold industry as long as the state is in the hands of the capitalist class. Time after time we have seen general strikes defeated by the forces at the disposal of the ruling class through their control of the machinery of government. Sometimes brutal force has been used, sometimes concessions are made, and sometimes, workers are starved into submission. As James Connolly said, ‘a full wallet wins out against an empty belly.’

An ill-prepared or poorly supported general strike usually is a huge self-inflicted defeat for the working class. The groundwork for one needs to be laid in every workplace and every community to ensure that no one is under any illusions that it will be an easy fight against an alliance of employers and the government. When we speak of the general strike, we are not concerned with the all-out strike of a single trade union but of all workers. It is no longer an expression of the trade union movement but has become a class movement. For the general strike to have a chance of success, workers should be convinced of the importance of the goal. It must be shown that the purpose is legitimate and victory a realisable prospect. The general strike cannot be camouflage for revolution. The general strike, although powerless in itself as a revolutionary strategy, remains an important tool for the working class. In war, including the class war, there are only two options: fight to win, or yield. Both options produce casualties. There is no safe option for workers under attack in the class war, no place to hide in the hope of protecting one’s individual job, dignity and life. We can be certain that capital will continue to assault labour and workers will continue to defend their rights. Whether workers prevail will depend on the extent to which they fight as a class, using their greatest power – the power to stop production. Workers must use their power as a class and fight as a class. We must remember what it takes to win – fighting as a class. The general strike is a method to inflict damage upon our class enemy to protect ourselves rather than the means of our emancipation. Unions are bodies for economic defence, not political struggle. Workers join unions and go on strike to put more bread on the table. Only an independent political organisation of workers – a world socialist party – can promote the interests of the working class as a whole.

Bill Pritchard made a solidarity speech to Vancouver workers that their comrades in Winnipeg were in the fight, and it was now a question of standing by them and, if necessary, going down with them — or, later, going down by themselves. His advice was: ‘If you are going to drown — drown splashing!’ The working class must stand united, however ill-prepared their forces and however badly chosen the field.

ALJO

The Police v. The Police. (1919)

From the August 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist Press has been busy explaining to Simple Simon that the action of the police in "breaking their oath" is not only mutiny, but "a crime." Of course, it is always a crime when the bulldog turns and rends its master's hand, notwithstanding that that hand was doing things with a stick. But there is another side to the question.

During the long period when the workers were more somnolent than they are now, and that condition was reflected in a far more incomplete organisation and a far greater trust in and submission to their union officials, the bosses were not so much afraid of the "labour unrest" as they are to-day. Consequently they did not attach the same importance to the bobby as they do now, and they made the mistake of paying him accordingly.

The result was inevitable. Notwithstanding his oath, the policeman was forced to struggle for a betterment of his miserable condition. More even than in other trades—if that were possible—this necessarily meant organisation. A union was formed, and as the aspect of industrial affairs became darker, a police trade union, affiliated possibly with other trade unions, deriving a certain amount of its strength from those unions, was regarded as an extremely sinister thing.

The bosses got a bit nervous. They made panic concessions, and then they started to cut out the "cancer" - in other words, to smash the union.

Now it is quite clear that the men owed every jot and tittle of the improvement in their condition to the union. Their oath availed them nothing. It was only intended to bind them to vile conditions of pay and tyrannical discipline. They might have stood meekly by it till doomsday, nothing would have been done for them. Only when they seriously threatened to commit the "crime" of leaving their oath to look after itself, as butcher Asquith did his registration and other pledges, and Lloyd George did his pledge concerning sending young boys to the "front," did the masters deign to give them some measure of alleviation.

It is quite plain, then, where the crime comes in. It is certainly not in breaking their oath, which they had been driven to do by the callous indifference of the bosses to their claims, but in their desertion of the instrument which had gained them so much. To allow that to be crushed out, and those who had undertaken the task of organising them for the struggle, to go down in the hour of victory is both a mean and cowardly crime.

Writers in this paper have previously pointed out how extremely unlikely it was that any sort of union that could be any good to the men would secure official recognition. The forecast seems to be pretty correct. Had the police, however, behaved with sufficient courage and intelligence as to force the question of recognition to a successful issue, the simple and inevitable result must have been the increased use of bayonets instead of batons in industrial disputes. The masters have more strings than one to their bow.

A. E. Jacomb

Editorial: Bobby's Discretion. (1919)

Editorial from the June 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, the bobbies have funked it. We are not, for the present, at all events, to be treated to the comic spectacle of strike processions of bluebottles being shepherded through the streets by their own blacklegs, the "specials." The world has lost an entertainment.

Of course, we are not blind to the difficulties of the policemen's situation. Their bosses had got the strangle-hold on them. By the simple expedient of stopping sixpence in the pound of their wages, confiscating their fees for the service of summons, and in other dubious ways, the capitalists provide a pensions fund at poor Booby's expense. The loss of this pension, together with the "sack," is the first threat the bosses hold over the bobbies' heads. Bobby is a man with no other trade in his hands in the vast majority of cases. So the threat of losing a regular job has special terrors for him. In addition, the loss of his pension—a pension designed, as most pensions are, to get a disciplinary grip upon the subject which probably no other expedient possible in a "free country" could afford, is a prospect requiring a quite uncommon type of mind to withstand.

The bosses, of course, played the game for all it was worth. They said they were flooded with applications from soldiers and ex-soldiers to take the policemen's jobs. They also talked loudly but vaguely about the arrangements that were being made to meet Buttons' grievances. It was the old, old game of bribe some and threaten others—the game played from the beginning to the end of the recruiting for the war—the game played to kill the demobilisation trouble after the Armistice. As, in the earlier case, the single and the young were promised jobs and preferment if they enlisted, and the married and the older ones were threatened that they would have to go if they did shove the others in; as, later, the older men were promised early demobilisation if they kept quiet, and detention till the last if they did not, while the younger men were soothed with extra money, so the older policemen were threatened more particularly with the loss of all that was so nearly won, while the younger men were soothed with promised improvements in the longer road before them.

Meanwhile the policemen played their cards just about as badly as they could. They have climbed down under threats—than which hardly anything could more completely have exposed their weakness and fear. Added to this they have climbed down before their bosses had committed themselves to the vaguely talked-of concessions, and in face of this confession of funk and weakness those concessions are going to shrivel up considerably. The bosses have found out all they wanted to know—that the reward they are offering their bulldogs is sufficient to secure their allegiance to their odious duties. If they dare not decline those duties for themselves they can never dare to decline to perform them for others. So, when labour troubles come Bobby will not, the masters are assured, be a trade unionist, and they have secured this, thanks to their cunning, at about the lowest possible price.

The Daily Chronicle in its issue of June 2 tries to point out to the policemen why the Government can never recognise the Police Union, and, as usual, it reveals only half the truth. "The police exist," our contemporary says, "to support the State. That is what they are for. . . They cannot strike and agitate, or even become public politicians, without ceasing to be policemen." Which is true enough as far as it goes, but does not dispose of the not unimportant fact that the policeman is so essentially a member of the exploited class that he cannot get his admitted grievances redressed until he threatens to cease to be a policeman.

The more important matter, however, is the statement that a policeman is only such to support the State. The complement of this half truth is, of course, that the State is only an instrument for keeping the workers in subjection. Directly this position is realised it becomes obvious how far the police are from getting recognition for any police union that could possibly link them with the unions of the industrial world. The position of police force affiliated with the industrial trade unions would indeed be a tragic one in a time of strife. This the bosses have sense enough to perceive, if the underlings have not. And it is for this reason rather than that they are afraid of being dictated to by the men that the Government will never recognise the Police Union.

It was probably a lie that the police authorities are inundated with blackleg applications from soldiers, but the capitalists have a deep pocket, and, as long as their control of the instrument of the State lasts will have no serious difficulty in obtaining men who will carry out their behests. It is simply a question of the price.

The only thing that can deliver the policeman—as the rest of us— from the tyranny of his tormentors is for the working class to assume control of the State, and to use its forces, including the police, to abolish capitalism and establish the Socialist Commonwealth.