Running Commentary: Clerics’ confusion (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clerics’ confusion

Are we all god 's children, or are some of us — women — rather more distant relations of his — nieces perhaps? Are we all made in his immaculate image or are those of us in the female sex less capable than those of the male gender?

The Church of England, which purports to instruct us in morality and keeping our place as docile wage slaves in the capitalist order of things, is having difficulty in deciding whether to allow women the same opportunity to be ordained as men. The recent vote of the Synod, to refer the issue to a panel of 53 bishops, was not so much a decision as a deferment, in the hope that the slickest religious brains in the church can use the next six months or so to cook up a face-saving compromise.

This is all rather curious. The church has been operating for centuries as a bunch of intellectual storm-troopers (although latterly rather more like a company in Dad's Army) for class society. Do they think they might perform better, on behalf of the ruling class, if women were allowed to dress up in those silly clothes, perform the same meaningless rituals and preach to us about the rewards waiting in heaven for all who do their duty for capitalism?

On the other hand, why should any of them oppose women priests? (Graham Leonard, the Bishop of London, hinted broadly that he would leave the church if women are to be ordained. Not exactly a grievous loss to us if he did). Other churches have female priests, as does the Anglican church in some other countries. They don't seem to have any problems in doing the church's work of putting across the baseless, reactionary nonsense of religion.

This brings us to the most important question, of why women should want an equal right to become priests, especially if this means first being insulted by people like Graham Leonard. Of course, it's all part of the drive for sexual equality, for proving that women can do any job as efficiently as men. So far the jobs where this has been proved have included the armed forces (in some states there are female combat troops); the police (watch Hill Street Blues of a Saturday night to see how a girl can handle a truncheon); the prison service (there are now female governors of male prisons in Britain, making sure the prisoners are firmly locked away and punished appropriately); and of course there's the Prime Ministership . . .

Perhaps there are some women libbers who think it is a worthwhile result for their long campaign, that they can now do the same dirty work for capitalism as men. In fact, there are worthier aims to campaign for. Like a society free, not just of sexual inequality and repression but also of the religious hypocrisy which has helped to keep us all — and especially women — enslaved for too long.

Health service priorities

Another recent demonstration of the perverse priorities in capitalism is the statement by Norman Fowler, the Social Services secretary, that he has authorised health authorities to pay managers bonuses of up to £3.960 for making cuts in health service expenditure — cuts that are likely to entail the closure of hospitals.

Health service managers who don't mind acting as the government’s hatchet people can expect an extra £ 1.660 a year if they are general managers (five per cent on top of their annual salary of £33.200); for district managers £3,160 (ten per cent of their maximum of £31.600); and for unit managers. who run individual hospitals, an extra £3.960. or up to 15 per cent of the maximum salary of £26.400.

One of the ways in which the government seeks to justify its programme of hospital closures is through the cosy euphemism of "community care". This is the name given to the plan to remove many long-term sick, disabled and mentally ill from hospitals to be "cared for" in the community. Most people would accept that being looked after by loving friends, family or neighbours backed up by appropriate medical, nursing and social work support is preferable to incarceration in impersonal hospital wards. Unfortunately the reality of "community care" is often very different. Many long-stay hospital patients have remained in hospital precisely because they don't have family or friends willing or able to care for them; social services and community medical provision are already over-stretched and are unable to provide the support that would make "community care" a reality; there are insufficient resources being put into sheltered housing, group homes and day centres. The result is that the reality of "community care" for many people is a lonely, near-destitute existence in a depressing hostel; or homelessness or. for some, relapse into illness and a return to hospital.

Health service managers are being offered bribes to close hospitals, not because they are no longer needed but because meeting the needs of those who make up waiting list statistics is too expensive. Neither are hospitals being closed because "community care" is a more humane alternative. They are being closed because it is a cheaper alternative.

Policing pupils

Over the last few months the government has done its best to try to divert attention away from uncomfortable, but real, issues such as the continuing suffering caused by apartheid in South Africa, the failure of economic policies to stem the rise in unemployment, questions being asked about the nuclear power industry after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and so on. Instead we have had our attention focused on a series of pseudo-issues which can be "solved" easily. Litter in the streets: solution — call in capitalist entrepreneur Richard Branson to start a "Clean-Up Britain" campaign. Hippy peace convoys in the New Forest: mobilise an army of police at five in the morning to break up and disperse the camp. Sexual promiscuity among the young: introduce an amendment to the Education Bill to require teachers to stress moral values and family life in sex education classes.

This amendment to the Education Bill attracted considerable media attention and yet at the same time another two amendments were being tacked on to the Bill which, although they attracted less comment, are perhaps more insidious. They will require school governors to pay attention to the view of Chief Officers of the police when making decisions about school curricula and head teachers to take account of Chief Officers' views when organising lessons.

Are the police going to use their newly-acquired influence to ensure that children are taught about road safety, or the necessity of having lights on their bicycles, or what to do if they witness an accident7 So far the evidence suggests that this is not what the police have in mind. The 1983 report from the schools inspectors suggested that the value (to the police) of closer liaison between the police and schools would be that of "intelligence-gathering":

Police forces generally attach considerable importance to the advantages to be gained through unofficial contact with schools. Home-beat officers “drop in" at school during break for a chat with pupils or teachers . . . Most schools welcome and encourage this informal contact and may ask home-beat officers or juvenile bureau officers to have an unofficial "word" with pupils, or their parents, about whom they feel anxious in relation to criminal activity.

Of course there's an official term for this informal, unofficial contact between police and schools — "multi-agency policing". In practice this means that as many different people as possible are co-opted to do the dirty work of the police and inform on their neighbours and fellow workers through neighbourhood watch schemes and the involvement of social workers. Now it seems that the police, having got their foot in the door of school, are going to be allowed some input into the curriculum too.

Most teachers who attempt to talk about the morality of family life in sex education lessons will simply be laughed down by sophisticated teenagers who have their own moral code. But it's much harder to laugh down a police officer who enters the classroom to glean information through chats with pupils or teachers, or a Chief Constable who insists on his right to vet the curriculum.

Blogger's Note:

Though this Running Commentary column is unsigned, there's a strong chance it was written by Janie Percy-Smith. During this period, she was on the Standard editorial committee and was one of the journal's most prolific writers, and the 'Clerics' confusion' piece indicates that the author is female.

Should the workers obey the law? The working class viewpoint. (1911)

From the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Capitalist Ideal … ‘a law-abiding citizen‘

Those four words constitute the very highest eulogy than can be pronounced by capitalist lips. A man may be a poltroon or a hero, a rogue or a fool, a Christian or an atheist, an abstainer or a sot, a prince or a porter, but the finale for all worthy men alike, at the end of the day’s workless pleasure or pleasureless work, is this sententious approval – “He was a law-abiding citizen.”

On all other matters appertaining to the conduct of other people capitalists may be divided. One is monarchist, another republican, a third a teetotal fanatic, and a fourth a devotee of the hop and the grape, and the convictions of each play their part in the appraisement of the merits of their fellow men; but, whether they fill it with wine or water, not one would refuse to drain a glass and turn it, empty, down, to the memory of “a law-abiding citizen”.

But what is this fetich which is the highest pinnacle of capitalist ethic, the last word in capitalist morality? The Law! The Might and Majesty of the Law; the strong arm of the Law. Ah! that is the whole secret of it. The Law is all might, and majesty, and strong arm. Soldier and sailor, judge and jailor, policeman and prison and Jack Ketch! The Might and Majesty of the Law, indeed.

One would think that the Law, needing the support of such a vast machinery of coercion, must be a very uncomfortable and unpleasant thing to some people, and not that only, but antagonistic to an enormous number of the population. It must be so indeed. If Peace sits armed beneath her olive, she is armed against somebody.

And who is it that the Law is armed against? Perchance, reader, it is you and me. 

It is a saying which  continually assails our ears, that without Law there could be no Order. If this is true, if this is the very nature of things human, then it is truly a sad case with that poor, miserable rag, “human nature”, which it profits the prophets to tell us is fore-ordained to frustrate the Socialist ideal.

But it is not true. In spite of all that our “civilisation”, and particularly our capitalist “civilisation” has done for it, still “human nature” has not fallen so immeasurably below the wild beast standard that, in all circumstances, order can only exist under the wing of the Law.

The Law is a Class Instrument.

The common impression of that all is disorder and insecurity in savage life is far from the truth. In point of fact all the might and majesty of the Law has never been able to secure the orderly existence that obtained among primitive savage people. Barbarities there may be, connected with superstitious rites, but anarchy has never found a place among the savage races of the communistic stage. The reason is obvious – the interest of one is the interest of all.

Disorder creeps in with the rise of a ruling class, and Law slinks at its heels. A ruling class is always more or less parasitic. It raises itself upon the class it rules, making the latter toil and moil for it. In other words, it is a robber class.

Now if there is one trait inherent in “human nature” it is this – a rooted objection to being robbed. That process never fails, as far as the victim is conscious of it, to arouse the spleen of him whom it is practised upon. Hence a coercive force becomes necessary – not to the subject class, but to the ruling class.

This coercive force exists to conserve the social system under which, and the institutions by which, the dominant class practise their robbery. At first coercion is open, lawless force, for no cunningly devised cloak can obscure the antagonism of interests between the chattel-slave and his master. But as society grows more complex, as the ruling class finds itself threatened by other classes rising from below, as the rulers in society become relatively fewer, and, finally, as they are compelled more and more to rely on the subject classes to become their own suppressors, the necessity develops of substituting laws to be maintained for people to be suppressed.

Suppression is the function of the Law.

But whether the big ones of the earth  make laws for the suppression of people, and maintain those laws by force, or they suppress the people without troubling about laws, is in essence the same thing – suppression. Only the method is different.

From the earlier rising of the “State”, class rule has been based upon private property, so Law, at the bottom, has always had a private-property basis. This explains how it happens that the Law of ancient Rome has served for the foundation of the Law of every modern State. Roman Law was projected to maintain the ascendancy of a propertied class. After all these centuries, though new classes have risen and died away, still Law has no other function than to support a propertied class against the expropriated.

Law, then, is nothing but a class instrument – a weapon of the capitalist State for its own preservation. It is necessary to the capitalist State because the ruling class in capitalism have laid thieves’ hands upon the means of life and enslaved the people. The strong arm of the Law, soldier and sailor, judge and jailor, policeman and prison and Jack Ketch, is significant of the class struggle and class antagonism set up by that seizure of the means of life.

The Law is the Enemy of the People.

When the worker understands this his attitude toward the Law will be determined  accordingly. As he perceives it to be antagonistic to him, so he will become antagonistic to it – as, with increasing class-consciousness, he must to every instrument of the capitalist State. However much he may be made to fear the Law, the proletarian will no longer respect it. He will come to regard it in its true light, as the enemy, not the friend, of the working class; as the necessary adjunct of class rule, by means of which alone the producers of all wealth can be robbed and murdered and debauched, with some sort of one-sided orderliness, by a class of idle, drunken parasites, steeped to the neck in moral turpitude, sunk to the eye-brows in abomination which even the hardened Law dares find no name for.

That superstitious awe which, quite apart from the fear of policeman and prison and Jack Ketch, surrounds the Majesty of the Law, will dissipate, and no longer will the worker “blush for shame” at being caught in the act of law-breaking. On the other hand, such episodes as the “Houndsditch affair” and “Sidney Street” will assume a different aspect. It will be seen that, instead of the police laying down their lives for any high principle, they have died to secure against the depredations of desperate members of the working class, the wealth stolen from their fellows with outrage and violence infinitely more villainous than ever these so-called Anarchists resort to, as the ghastly murders of Whitehaven and Westhoughton transcend in callous brutality those of Houndsditch.

Great as the revolutionary’s satisfaction must be to observe the breaking down and extinction of this reverence for the Law that is equivalent to so many thousands of extra policemen to the capitalist class, such satisfaction does not arise solely from the fact of the increasing difficulties of our expropriators and spoliators, but from the recognition of the larger fact that, as successive lessons such as that now being wrought out in connection with the strike at Hull, teach the workers how the Law is always on the side of the masters, how completely it is in their hands, they will be driven to enquire what the Might and Majesty of the Law really means.

The Workers’ Course.

This spirit of enquiry will be the herald of the dawn. They will perceive then that this mass of legality which men call law, is simply the stalking-horse of oppression, the verbal garment of brute force. They will realise that it is this brute force alone which maintains the murderers of Whitehaven and Bolton, of Belfast and Tonypandy, in power, by maintaining their control of the means of life.

The workers’ course will then be very clear. They will set their faces toward the capture of all this coercive force, by organised struggle on the political field. When they have succeeded in capturing political power they have, by the very fact of so doing, proclaimed at once their strength and their capacity. Their strength to wield the armed forces to the revolutionary purpose, since they will have captured the instruments by which it is wielded. Their capacity to organise themselves as a productive community, since they will have organised themselves for the infinitely more difficult task of their own emancipation.

The first fact in itself would undermine the military strength of the capitalist class, for the working-class soldiery armed in the capitalist interest, realising the political strength of their own class, and inevitably sharing in the advanced proletarian class-consciousness, would be encouraged to follow their class interest – just as the French regulars, under the much less favourable circumstances of the Paris Commune, sided with the workers when they thought them strong, and against them when they thought them weak.

Let the workers, therefore, regard the Law and its machinery from their own standpoint – as an instrument of their oppression, and organise themselves into a political party in order to capture it, and use it in the final act of all law, the glorious crowning fruition of the last and bitterest of all class struggles – their own emancipation from slavery.

A. E. Jacomb

Cops protect robbers (1981)

From the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism will be a world society without a police force. In fact, it will be a society without a legal system. And because there will be no laws there will be no courts to argue about them in, no prisons in which to lock up offenders, and no people who will be called criminals because they have broken the law.

The idea of socialism as a lawless, crimeless society is likely to evoke the strangest of responses from those who stand for what is euphemistically referred to as ‘law and order’. Judges will tell us that prisons and punishment must always be, for we are all sinners. The person in the street will say that without the law there would be anarchy and under anarchy nothing would be safe. Criminologists will tell us that anti-social behaviour is a necessary feature of modern urban industrial living (which is only a trendy way of saying what the judge has already said). Indeed, even most criminals will insist that a certain degree of law and order is necessary and that the best place for those who have committed worse crimes than them is in a prison cell.

As for the politicians, Leftie Frank Field (Labour, Birkenhead, no convictions) writes that ‘Like most people, I cannot conceive of a society without a police force’. (Guardian, 5/8/81). Tory Home Secretary Whitelaw warned on television recently that ‘without the police, that which we treasure as a nation would be jeopardised’. (Could he have been referring to the Stock Exchange?) Even the very silly Workers’ Revolutionary Party, in their recent GLC election manifesto, called for the replacement of the Metropolitan police force by an armed workers’ militia.

The public’s view of the police is currently undergoing a profound change. The image of the Dixon of Dock Green—type copper with a patronising concern to protect ‘villains’ from themselves and a claim to serve ‘the community’ is fast dying. The role of the police as the brutal defenders of property and privilege is increasingly being recognised. The use of the police as strikebreakers, as contributors to the harassment of racial minorities, as corrupt bullies who will often turn a blind eye to law-breaking if the price is high enough, and, in the cases of Liddle Towers, Blair Peach and unrecorded others, as the unprosecuted murderers of members of the working class.

This writer’s first experience of police methods came during the Grunwick strike in 1977 when he saw uniformed officers kicking pickets when they lay on the ground and beating people up in the back of open police vans. Many trade unionists will testify as to how the police have been used in strikes in order to make life hard for the strikers. Accounts of police persecution of legally innocent workers are increasingly common, especially in areas where there are many black immigrants. Many people convicted of crimes—and many not convicted, but charged-have told how police have illegally beaten them, forced confessions from them and even intimidated their friends and relatives.

The words of police chiefs do not help to comfort those who live in fear of ‘the boys in blue’: Metropolitan Police Chief Commissioner, David McNee, recently stated that ‘if people stay off the streets at night they will have nothing to fear from the police’, while Merseyside’s Chief Constable. Kenneth Oxford, wrote in his report to the Liverpool police committee, six weeks before the Toxteth riot, that

My policy on relationships with the community has been endorsed and strengthened throughout the year, with all members of the force being mindful in this direction. I am confident that these relationships with all sections of the community are in a very healthy position and I do not foresee any serious difficulties developing in the future. (Quoted in the Guardian, 6/8/81. Our emphasis.)

Oxford, whose force has been seen as a major contributory factor in the outburst on Toxteth streets, is clearly not a man of prescience.

Much as some people would like to turn a blind eye to it, it is a fact that the police force often exceeds its legal powers, frequently serves to increase social tensions and ignore criminality when it is committed by the rich. But this is not the root of the problem; socialists are not simply opposed to the police-or to “bad” police—but to a system of social relationships which necessitates coercive forces.

The purpose of the police is to defend property. Yes, it is true that they help old ladies cross the road (whether they want to or not) and they run youth clubs for skinheads who want to be the next Henry Cooper. This, however, is not their main job and the idea of the police as uniformed social workers is a myth. Indeed, police officers can often be disciplined by their superiors for spending too much time helping people when there is real police work to be done elsewhere. One such case is quoted by E. Bittner:

An officer was walking a beat in a quiet residential area when he encountered a middle-aged matron who had been locked out of her home. She had a load of groceries and obviously could not climb into the window she designated as open . . . He set aside hat and truncheon, climbed in through the window, and came downstairs to let her in. As she was grateful and was going to write a letter informing his superior of his meritorious service, he had to carefully explain to her that what he did was against police regulations and quite possibly against the law (since he had no evidence that she actually lived in the house). Any mentions of his actions would probably become a black mark in his personnel file. (“A Theory of the Police” in Potential for Reform of Criminal Justice, ed. H. Jacob, Sage Publications.)

Before the establishment of an official police force in 1829, policing was the direct responsibility of property-owners. Private security gangs were employed to defend the wealth of the rich against the illegal requirements of the poor. Before the rise of industrial capitalism, the administration of the law was primarily in the hands of local land magnates. They would appoint their own magistrates, pay for their own guards and be looked upon as the final arbiters in local disputes. With the increasing role of the state as a means of social control in the mid-Nineteenth century, the unity between the right of ownership and the right of coercion became blurred, but not eradicated.

The role of the early police force, as now, was to ensure the maintenance of the order of property. In an age when slums and mansions, expensive restaurants and hungry children, night clubs and homeless vagrants exist in such close proximity to one another it is vital for the owning class to have a permanent force to protect them and their property from the intrusion of the impoverished. With capitalism, the concept of criminality became synonymous with the disruption of property relationships. In earlier centuries laws tended to be justified in moral terms, but modern jurisprudence has increasingly discarded anachronistic moral and religious formulae and has described its role in explicitly material terms. The police, as a body which is directly governed by laws passed in parliament, now have a clearly political role. What the state says, the police must do.

Dirty work

The state is not an institution which has always existed. In ancient societies, when the means of producing wealth were commonly held, there was no need for an institution to defend private property. The state was a direct consequence of the earliest appropriation of wealth in the form of tools, land and slaves—by private owners. The evolution of the state, as an institution to protect and expand private property, has developed as humankind has increased its domination over the natural environment. With the emergence of nation states with their own particular economic interests, in Western Europe in the late fifteenth century, it became necessary for states to recruit standing armies to fight the battles of the various national ruling classes. At this stage of the evolution of the state machine emerged a division of its functions between military responsibilities to the ruling class—the protection and expansion of markets—and domestic responsibilities- the retention of internal order on the part of the nation’s rulers. That is the role of the police: they are the uniformed guards of the property-owning class. For every worker’s car which they retrieve and for every mugger they catch (and the police are notoriously bad at solving crimes which affect the working class), there are a hundred cases in which the police are quite directly defending property against poverty.

Of course, the capitalists do not do their own dirty work. They are the last people to be found treading the beat or risking their lives in fights against criminals. Why should they bother when they can pay suckers from the working class to act as human guard-dogs on their behalf? Just like other members of the working class, members of the police force have problems. They are dependent upon wages and, like most workers, these are never enough to satisfy their complete needs. They are frequently pushed around by authoritarian superiors who expect them to obey senseless orders. Many of them would like to be liked, but because of the real nature of their job (which is disguised during their training) they are forced to come into frequent conflict with their fellow workers. Of course, many workers join the police force because they are authoritarian, sadistic or politically motivated, but for the vast majority it is just a job, just a wage and just employment. Often the police respond to their problems by demanding more weapons or tougher laws, but in the end these will not eradicate their problems. So long as there is a system which needs repression, intolerance and thuggery in order to defend its norms, and as long as there are wage slaves who are willing to get their hands dirty defending their exploiters’ position, the police’s problem will continue.

Reformists are occasionally heard to demand the reform of the police. Indeed, the new Labour GLC leader, Ken Livingstone, has recently pledged himself in favour of a people’s police force, accountable to a ‘socialist GLC’! We have all experienced what is meant by a people’s police force. In state capitalist Poland, the armed bullies who smashed the skulls of striking workers in Bydgoszcz were called a ‘people’s’ militia. Did that stop them from viciously defending the right of capital against the needs of wage labour? To conceive of a legal system which will operate in terms of friendship and consensus within a system where ownership and control are firmly in the hands of a minority who own the productive and distributive machinery is naive in the extreme.

In a socialist society the means of wealth production and distribution will be commonly owned and democratically controlled by the whole community without distinction of race or sex. In such a society, where no factory, farm, mine, newspaper, aeroplane or house will have an owner, be it an individual or the state, there will be no need for property laws. There will be no function for police or courts or prisons. The vast libraries containing thick statutes on who is entitled to possess what (and, by implication, who isn’t) will be placed in museums. The truncheons and uniforms and judge’s wigs will be regarded as items of perverse historical curiosity. For once the wealth of the world belongs to all humanity and there for our free access, what will there be to steal and what reason would there be to steal it?

Of course, the Human Nature Brigade will not be slow to answer our question. They will correct us for indulging in such utopian dreams. They will remind us that it is not the viciously competitive, warlike system of capitalism which leads people to commit acts of violence, but Human Nature. They will inform us that it is not the system which turns sex into a commodity and makes films glorifying the conquest of women which leads men to rape women, but Human Nature. They, who are the selected élite who have special knowledge of mankind’s inherent characteristics, will be able to tell us that it is not the overcrowded, boring, stressful conditions of most workers’ lives which leads some to act anti-socially, but Human Nature. And our Nature being what it is, we shall always need police to push us around and prison warders to lock us up and judges to judge us. Socialists argue that the social environment makes men and women what they are and that a competitive, jungle society will create anti-social beasts. Change the way in which the society is organised and human behaviour will change also.

But just as capitalism creates wage slaves who want to be pushed around and want to be slaves and fear freedom, at the same time, paradoxically, it creates its own gravediggers. By subjecting the working class more and more to the reality of its exploited and oppressed condition, capitalism creates dissent. If such dissent currently takes the form of engaging in futile street battles with the police and looting the third-rate commodities from the windows of the cheapest shops, experience will eventually transform such dissent into conscious political action. After all, however many policeman’s hats are knocked from their head, the police and the class which they exist to protect will still be there. However many reforms are passed to soften policemen’s truncheons, the arm of the law will always be stronger than the power of a politically atomised working class.

Steve Coleman

Sting in the Tail: An open letter (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

An open letter

To: Colin Tudge,

Centre of Philosophy,

London School of Economics.

Dear Colin,

We enjoyed your recent diatribe in the Independent on Sunday against the effects of the profit motive on agriculture.

You explained how your researches into famine convinced you that food production in “the modern world” is not aimed at feeding people but at making money. Then you condemned the “bad husbandry” which led to BSE and the tortures inflicted on farm animals and provided the reason:

"When profit is the driving force. .. those who do not cut corners go to the wall."

Yes, you certainly put the boot into the profit motive in agriculture, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough, does it? After all, food is only one of society’s necessities: housing, clothing, medicine, in fact all the things we need are produced for profit and not people.

So, Colin, what you call “the modern world” is really the capitalist system and that’s what you should be attacking, not just one aspect of it.

Science and profits

The Observer (28 April) has revealed another piece of capitalist skulduggery in the relentless pursuit of profit:

"Boots, one of Britain's most trusted companies, commissioned research and then suppressed it after the results showed that its most lucrative drug could be replaced by products three times as cheap and just as effective. ”

After paying $250,000 for the survey by the University of California to test their drug Synthroid against cheaper ones produced by their rivals, they threatened legal action against publication. They used a team of private investigators to discredit the report, another example of the waste of human effort and the distortion of science caused by a society based on the profit motive.

Inside a society based on production for use the disinterested pursuit of human knowledge will be essential. Inside that society distortion of scientific research for profit will be impossible.

Learned fools

Below are some examples of “howlers” from last year’s GCSE exams:

Q. If the letter MW appear on a radio, what does it mean? 

A. Don’t play it on top of the microwave.

Q. Name some key figures from the industrial revolution. 

A. Harold Wilson and Arthur Scargill.

Q. Give an example of the use of the word “judicious”. 

A. The hands that judicious can be soft as your face with mild, green Fairy liquid.

Here are some howlers provided by very important public figures:

The core of empire was not profit but governance (Prof Max Beloff).

Iran is a theocracy but it is also a democracy (Louis Farrakhan of the Black Muslims).

Private ownership is the basis of all ethics on which man’s personality is built (Cardinal Józef Glemp, Primate of Poland).

Prescott’s pretensions

John Prescott, deputy leader of the Labour Party, declares that he is middle class, so Barry Hugill writes in an article in the Observer (14 April) entitled “We’re all middle class now”.

"It's a tricky question because there is no right answer. Karl Marx, never the snappiest of writers, dreamed up ‘relationship to the means of production’ as the key factor. So an engineer earning more than £40,000 per year would be working class because he doesn't own the company he his working for—he is just a prole like the rest of us. "

This won’t do for Hugill. After discussing education, vocabulary, occupation, housing, income and snobbery he concludes “So what are you? And does it matter?”

Well, yes it does. Class is determined by none of the categories in Hugill’s 600-word article, but by Karl Marx’s “relationship to the means of production”. Snappy enough for you, Mr Hugill?

Hattersley’s hesitations

Somewhat surprisingly, Prescott’s predecessor as Deputy leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley, has an inkling that this might be so, writing in The Guardian (22 April) that:

"Social groups are determined by their relationship to the means of production. It is just my luck to begin spouting Marxism at the moment when nobody else believes a word that he wrote. ”

Hattersley’s comment on Marxism is wrong, but if by “social groups” he means classes then he is right. People who work for a wage or salary are working class whether they know this or not, and those who think they are “middle class” are only kidding themselves.

Alderson in Wonderland

The left was delighted, the right were enraged, and socialists were amused.

John Alderson, ex-Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, wrote in the left-wing journal Red Pepper claiming that Britain is becoming a police state and anti-road protesters and protesters against the export of veal calves are the hope for the future.

Alderson gave his Humpty Dumpty view of the world in the statement:

"The primary task of policing is to uphold and safeguard human rights, he says, calling for an independent police commission to resolve conflict between police and public ” (Observer, 21 April).

The primary task of policing is to protect private property. The hope for the future is in workers organising for a society based on common ownership.

Alderson, Red Pepper, its left-wing supporters and its right-wing opponents, are united in their opposition to that revolutionary aim. Curiouser and curiouser.

Voice From The Back: The benefits of globalisation (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The benefits of globalisation

“America’s steel industry is in a mess; only a week ago, a veteran foundry, Bethlehem Steel followed two dozen of its brethren into Chapter 11 bankruptcy . . . The company blamed its plight on a tide of cheap imports and this week Pittsburgh-based US Steel announced third-quarter losses of $23 million. …. President Bush in June announced he would take action under section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974, an obscure law that permits global safeguards to industry. Unlike anti-dumping measures which require proof of unfairness, section 201 permits the erection of tariff barriers to provide temporary relief from import competition.” (Times, 24 October)

So, behind all it’s bombast about free trade and the benefits of competition, the US government reveals yet again a truism about capitalism. Capitalists are in favour of free trade when they are winning but against it when their competitors are winning.

It’s a dog’s life

Something of the madness of capitalism in general and post-disaster New York in particular can be gauged from Chris Ayres’s Wall Street Diary in the Times (25 October).

“A bomb-sniffing dog can take as much as $2,500 (£1,760) back to his kennel for a 16 hour shift. With the dogs working seven days a week, this adds up to an impressive $912,500 per year.”

A great deal more money than the wages of the heroic New York firemen who perished in that recent disaster, or indeed, for that matter, any of our readers.

It ain’t half hot, mum

In this column in May we reported that British police forces were interested in the development of an American crowd control vehicle that zapped demonstrators with microwaves. The good news for control freaks everywhere is that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in New Mexico have recently completed tests.

“The Air Force now wants to use this Active Denial Technology (ADT), which it says is non-lethal, for peacekeeping or riot control at “relatively low range” – possibly from low-flying aircraft. … AFRL says that the 3 millimetre wavelength radiation penetrates only 0.3 millimetres into the skin, rapidly heating the surface above the 45 degrees C pain threshold. At 50 degrees C, they say the pain reflex makes people pull away automatically in less than a second – it’s said to feel like fleetingly touching a hot light bulb. Someone would have to stay in the beam for 250 seconds before it burnt the skin, the lab says, giving ‘ample margin between intolerable pain and causing a burn'” (New Scientist, 29 October).

Wow, is this tempting, or what, for repressive regimes everywhere? Burn, baby, burn.

Gerry in Wonderland

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” A similar disdain for language would seem to be shared by Lewis Carroll’s character in Alice in Wonderland and Gerry Adams.

“Mr Adams said, ‘The IRA is not a terrorist organisation. The name terrorist is bandied about willy-nilly. Clearly what happened in the USA recently was a terrorist act where civilians were deliberately targeted. In any war terrible things were done. In my view the IRA has never deliberately targeted civilians'”.

Pressed on whether the IRA had never placed bombs in shopping districts he said, “Well, it depends, it depends, you see.” He then added: “It’s quite academic.” The Herald (6 November)

Not really all that academic though if your kid has been blown up by some mad zealot, is it, Gerry?

A strange democracy

In an apparently surprising turnaround Michael Bloomberg was elected Mayor of New York last month. Surprising in that he was standing as a Republican in a city where five out of six voters are registered Democrats. Surprising also in that until about a year ago he was a Democrat. He has had no previous political experience Blatantly he only became a Republican to stand for mayor and used the campaign slogan “A leader not a politician.”

His 51 percent share of the vote becomes less surprising however, when you realise that Mr Bloomberg is a billiomaire and spent a staggering $60 million on his campaign. In other words he bought the office of Mayor of New York. A strange “democracy” indeed.

Praising Karl Marx

Socialists are used to the works of Karl Marx being dismissed or ignored by capitalism’s academics, so it is a pleasant change to read on page 166 of Steve Jones’s Almost Like A Whale a brief compliment to Marx:

“Karl Marx got it (as usual) more or less right: ‘what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality’. His statement brings out the pragmatic nature of evolution, in a hive or anywhere else. Bee society has no plans.”

From rats to riches

A short news item from  Rio de Janeiro speaks volumes about the ingenuity of the working class and the madness of capitalism. “Rats in the Brazilian city outnumber human beings ten to one and people are being offered about £1.30 for every 2lb of dead rat found. Officials are using poison and will collect carcasses – despite fears that poor people will begin rearing the rodents.” (Times, 10 November).

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"

Crime — who loses? (1978)

From the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

I suppose you'd say my politics are Tory, really. I believe in getting as much money for myself as quickly as I can, by any method. I'm a free enterprise man. (Bank Robber—Wormwood Scrubs.)

It is a long, long time since the figures for recorded crime indicated any decline in its popularity as a method of getting rich quick, or at least staying a little less poor. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester (of whom more later) recently described it as ". . . possibly the biggest and fastest growing enterprise in the world”, which is how the City columns once talked about the oil industry or the activities of Jim Slater. Yet at the same time the belief persists that crime can be reduced or even wiped out.

For example Horace Cutler, the flamboyant Conservative leader of the Greater London Council, said last April:

Never has London been so dirty, so vandalised, so decaying and dangerous. We must take action now to eliminate the mugger, the vandal and the football hooligan. (Daily Telegraph, 21/4/78).

No half measures for Cutler—he wants to eliminate crime and, as he was speaking just before the local elections, we can assume that he was suggesting the best way of doing this was. to vote for his party. This might have been more convincing were it not for the fact that he is already responsible for running this city he describes as dirty, vandalised and dangerous.

Another popular assumption is that if crime can be eliminated and everyone starts living a quiet, law abiding life everything will be alright. (Although the bank robber quoted at the head of this article would probably disagree—he would be likely to die of boredom.) This assumption is based on the idea that law and order is a matter of morality, that the law sets standards which protect and benefit us all and that criminals are people who behave in an immoral way:

. . . what is serious crime but a lack of consideration for others, a failure to recognise their full reality and rights? (Colin Welch—Daily Telegraph 17/4/78).

(Our bank robber has some views on the way banks in their dealings are notable for a lack of consideration for others but never mind.) But many lawful acts are anything but protective and beneficent—for example the acts of organised violence carried out by the armed forces. Similarly, private property rights—on which capitalist society is based—are inconsiderate of the mass of people in the sense that they deny them free access and clearly work against their interests.

How big, in reality, is the problem of crime? There is such an abundance of statistics that anyone can take their pick. Try these:

In 1900 there were less than 80,000 offences recorded in England and Wales. In 1976 there were over 2 million.

Over the past twenty years the number of indictable offences per 100,000 of the population has quadrupled. Violent crime has doubled since 1969.

Last April the British Insurance Association said that between 1976 and 1977 the value of property taken in burglaries from the home went up from £22.4 million to £30.3 million. The BIA had reason to be pained; during 1977 they paid out a record £64.2 million to cover losses by theft.

It is usual to conclude from information like that that crime is rising like some great noxious wave. Parallels are drawn with the increase in divorce, abortions, venereal disease, to compose a picture of a society about to collapse into a new Dark Age. Retired officers in Bournemouth cower behind their Daily Telegraph and take hope from the politicians— usually Tory — who call for harsher penalties and tougher prisons.

In a sense they have reason to be concerned; so steep a rise in recorded crime is a comparatively recent trend. From 1900 to 1920 crime tended to rise in line with the population; it went up more sharply during the Slump, then levelled off before bursting up in the post war “crime wave”. That, too, was seen as a fundamental threat to social order but it was followed, between 1950 and 1954, by a relative stability in the figures. Since then they have been rising and are now doing so at about 15 per cent each year.

But these figures should not be taken neat and regarded as an accurate measure of social behaviour; there are important qualifications which need to be applied. Firstly, “serious” crime—murder, the more grievous assaults; armed robbery—makes up only about 4 per cent of the total. Much of the rest, apart from motoring offences, consists of theft—and about 65 per cent of that involves property under £25 in value. So if the figures for crime tell us anything, it is not that we are about to be murdered in our beds — statistically we are more likely to be involved in a little shoplifting.

Then there is the matter of the very basis of the statistics—the fact that they measure only recorded crime, or crime known to the police. And of course a lot of offences never come to police notice—minor acts of vandalism or the theft of a small amount of money from an unattended handbag or a black eye after a night on the beer. This means, firstly, that there is a lot more crime than we ever hear about and secondly that the statistics might be completely wrong, especially in recording rises or falls in particular crimes, because there may be reasons which persuade people to report a crime at one time and not at another.

For example, the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders thinks (The Guardian, 25/4/78) that the apparent increase in burglaries, which so worries the British Insurance Association, is due in part to people being readier to report the offence and the reason for this is that there has been an increase in the insurance of household contents, along with insuring the mortgage.

In the same way, the police may in some circumstances arrest someone for an offence when at other times they might let him go. Police activity can be influenced by the policy—which might mean the personal quirks—of their Chief Constable. In Greater Manchester the head policeman, James Anderton, has a reputation for a persecutionary zeal against those who are labelled as sexual deviants. According to The Guardian (11/4/78) Anderton’s policemen are especially active against homosexual clubs and were actually considering bringing a prosecution against one, under a bylaw of 1882, for “licentious or indecent dancing”. But the Greater Manchester force does not display the same enthusiasm to hunt down all law breakers; their policy in the case of motorists is to go soft and to try for persuasion before prosecution. Now the figures for crime in Greater Manchester in 1977 went up by over 10 per cent, while those for motoring fell by 35 per cent. But this does not mean that when in Manchester you can cross the road safely but must watch who you dance with.

Much of the response to crime can only be described as a panic in the face of what have been called folk-devils. In recent years we have seen many examples of this, of the mob reaction to Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers and now muggers and football hooligans. This panic is open to exploitation by vote-hunting politicians but it also infects eminent members of the judiciary, who seem to allow it to affect the sentences they dish out. Last April at the Old Bailey Melford Stevenson, who has made his name in a number of cases not notable for their lenient treatment of the person in the dock, sent a man to prison for three years for the manslaughter of his baby and made the comment that this offence is

. . . now frighteningly too frequent ... It is a curious thing that about 15 years ago the phrase “baby battering” was not in the ordinary Englishman’s vocabulary.

It was not reported, whether Melford Stevenson is aware that the popularity of a phrase is not a measure of the frequency of an offence, nor whether he realises that any increase in prosecutions for baby battering is more likely due to a higher awareness of the problem, and the more efficient machinery for detecting it, than any proven increase in the offence.

Now if the majority of crime consists of offences against property, is it too simple to conclude that the ending of property rights, by the abolition of capitalism, would have the effect of ending crime? There are many who argue that it is too simple, that crime is a response to an emotional maladjustment. Superficially there is something to be said for this as it is common for offenders to come from broken families or to have a history of living in institutions like orphanages. But this can only be a superficial argument since it takes no account of the fact that our type of family is itself a social organism of capitalism, with defects typical of that social system, and cannot be considered in isolation from that system.

And what, in any event, are emotional maladjustments but reactions to or efforts to defend ourselves from, the stresses of capitalism? The ideal of capitalism is the supremely competitive being, a sort of James Bond of industry or commerce whose ruthlessness is shot through with glamour. In reality, capitalism offers a poor bargain to the docile, law abiding worker who carries his degradation with him wherever he goes. John McVicar, who was one of England’s recently most celebrated (and most hunted) big time criminals put his view on this:

Money has never been, or ever will be, my primary object . . . My life was always exciting and dramatic; wherever I was. I was part of the action. Psychologically, I had the satisfaction of personifying the counter-culture with which I identified myself, and I found this was confirmed by my notoriety and prestige. (McVicar By Himself.)

No bank clerk, no assembler on the endless production line, no conforming worker wearing his mortgage and his HP debts like so many albatrosses, can make any such claim. His prestige is limited to a reputation for keeping the paperwork flowing from In tray to Out, or not falling behind with the payments. He personifies the drabbest and most restrictive of cultures, the culture founded on his own exploitation. Perhaps it is arguable whether McVicar (now a “reformed character”) who ended up with a total of twenty three years prison, really got a bad bargain.

Working class emotional problems cannot be separated from the environment in which they are raised. It is no coincidence that crime is high, and violent, in the great urban concentrations—London, Liverpool, Glasgow—where life is fast and pressured and where one generation of slums follows another. Such places did not arise by accident; they originated in capitalism’s need to crowd workers together near their places of employment and to house them in dwellings built as cheaply as possible. This is not something which died with Charles Dickens; such places are still being constructed and need very little to realise their destiny of slumdom and breeding grounds for discontent and crime. One such is the Hyson Green estate in Nottingham, which recently won much notoriety for an especially nasty affair and where one of the unfortunate inhabitants with an aerosol epitomised the agony of living there—“These flats are the slums of tomorrow”.

There is every reason for people who live in conditions which offer no hope to behave in a hopeless fashion. Consciously or not, they grasp that capitalism offers them nothing and they react in what they see as an anti-social fashion, attacking the property precepts on which capitalism is based. One recent case, which was concerned with squatting, allowed Lord Denning to set out those priorities:

. . . the courts must, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless . . . (Quoted in The Politics of the Judiciary—J. A. G. Griffiths.)

If this statement makes it clear that property rights are all-pervasive, it also sets out the near impossibility of not offending against those rights, if only because they are themselves offensive to human interests.

So the “crime busters” must lose and so must the criminals, who at best can hope to claw their way a little above the rest of the working class and who often end up, like our bank robber, rotting away years of their lives in mind-numbing prisons. For it is the working class, who read their newspapers and watch television and worry, because they are told to, about crime, who are massively the losers. At the same time as they worry, they dream of the equivalent of a Great Train Robbery, to lift them away from their life of indignity heaped on degradation. But although it has its losers—and its winners—capitalism is anything but a game.

Ivan.

Diabolical liberty (1985)

From the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the individual right to go to work during a strike equal to the collective right to strike? This is the issue at the centre of a row within the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) which resulted in the resignation of Larry Gostin, the General Secretary, four members of its Executive Committee and an Independent Inquiry team appointed to look at the civil liberties implications of the policing of the coal strike. It has also led to reports in the Press that NCCL has been hijacked by the Left, and claims from some NCCL members that, on the contrary, they have stopped the organisation from being dragged off its libertarian course by preventing an unholy alliance with such dubious elements as the uncivil and illiberal right. The latter was the policy that they claimed was advocated by Larry Gostin and his supporters.

NCCL was set up in 1934 as a result of concern about police brutality towards hunger marchers. Its objective as stated in its founding constitution was:

to assist in the maintenance of hard-won rights, especially freedom of speech, the press and assembly, from all infringements by executive or judicial authority contrary to the due process of law, or infringement by the tendency of governmental or other agencies to use their powers at the expense of the precarious liberties for which citizens of this country have fought

and to:

aid in advancing measures for the recovery or enlargement of these liberties (cited in Patricia Hewitt. The NCCL Fifty Years On in Peter Wellington (ed), Civil Liberties 1984. p.15).

Over the years NCCL's activities have included monitoring police behaviour at marches and demonstrations; preparing legal test cases where it is believed that an individual's rights have been abused; setting up enquiries into incidents such as the demonstration in Southall in 1979 which resulted in the death of Blair Peach; campaigns for withdrawal of, or amendments to, legislation which has extended state power such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

NCCL has consistently claimed to be an organisation concerned with civil liberties issues rather than with social justice (a point reiterated by Larry Gostin on his resignation). Patricia Hewitt, a former NCCL General Secretary, wrote:

From the outset. NCCL saw its activities as belonging to a specific tradition of civil liberties — the defence of civil and political rights, such as freedom of speech and association, rather than economic and social rights, such as the right to education or a minimum standard of living (Patricia Hewitt, op. cit., p. 16).

It was hoped that by adopting such a position NCCL would be able to cut across party political divisions. But this stance has not. over the years, always proved successful. In 1946 such eminent members as George Orwell and E.M. Forster resigned from NCCL because they believed it was being used as a front organisation for the Communist Party. NCCL's traditional links with the trade union movement have also led to accusations that NCCL is too closely associated with the Labour Party — a view that has gained increasing currency as a result of the recent developments.

The recent controversy, which came to a head at NCCL's AGM, arises from a resolution taken by the 1984 AGM to set up an independent inquiry into the policing of the coal strike. The inquiry's terms of reference were as follows:

To inquire into and thereby establish the fullest possible account and the civil liberties implications of the role of the police, the police authorities and the criminal courts in the events arising from and relating to the NUM dispute, which began in March 1984 (Preface to Civil Liberties and the Miners ' Dispute, First Report of the Independent Inquiry).

In December 1984 the Inquiry team published an interim report which immediately sparked off angry debate within NCCL. While the report was largely critical of the conduct of the police towards striking miners, it also contained the following paragraph:

We accept that the freedom not to take part in a strike is as much a fundamental right as the right to strike. Going to work during a strike is in any case a lawful activity, and like any other lawful activity ought not to be impeded by violence, threats or physical obstruction. We have identified the freedom to travel unhindered for any lawful purpose as a fundamental liberty; this is equally so whether the purpose is peaceful picketing, taking part in a demonstration, or simply going to work (First Report of the Independent Inquiry, p.6.)

It was this equation of the "right to strike" with the "right not to take part in a strike" and the report's comments about the behaviour of both striking and working miners which led to its being condemned as a "Scab's Charter".

At the end of February, NCCL's executive committee passed a number of motions which censured the inquiry team. Firstly, they "regretted" that the independent inquiry "exceeded its terms of reference in commenting on the conduct of striking and working miners and in setting out civil liberty principles which did not directly relate to the role of the police, police authorities and criminal courts". This resolution was upheld by the AGM. Secondly, the executive committee "regretted" that the presentation of the report, and especially its plea that all sides "refrain from violence, intimidation or other actions likely to cause injury or public disorder or provoke unnecessary ill-feeling", was "unnecessarily damaging to the miners' cause". Again this was upheld by the AGM. Thirdly, the executive committee stated that "the right to strike is a fundamental civil liberty and entirely rejects the proposition that those who break strikes are exercising an equally fundamental right". The AGM passed a similarly worded resolution.

Larry Gostin resigned as General Secretary a few days later because, as he wrote in his letter of resignation:

I, of course, respect the democracy of NCCL, but feel I could not publicly defend the full range of NCCL policies in good conscience, and with conviction and credibility. (The Times. 3 May 1985)

What should be made of this controversy? Is it just an internal political battle between different factions within NCCL? While this may be the case, it raises serious questions which are worth examining in greater detail, particularly that of the right to strike versus the right not to strike.

In the context of the coal strike this issue was made more complicated because the NUM did not hold a strike ballot. The miners who continued to work could therefore claim, with some justification, that since they had not been given the opportunity to express their views democratically through a ballot, the only way they could exercise their freedom of "thought, conscience and belief' (a ''right" contained in NCCL's own Charter of Civil Rights and Liberties) was by continuing to work during the strike.

But suppose that a strike ballot had been called and a majority of NUM members had democratically decided to take strike action. What then would be the position of the minority of NUM members who. for whatever reason, disagreed with the strike? One option open to them would be to obey the strike call but not to take part in strike activities. such as picketing, on the grounds that while the individuals concerned did not support this strike they did support their trade union, recognised the importance of trade union solidarity and felt that more damage would be done to the Union as a whole through continuing to work than they would gain as individuals by exercising the "right" to act on conscience.

An alternative, if the "dissenter" within the union felt strongly enough against the strike would be to continue to work, but at the same time to accept both the "right" of strikers to try to persuade him not to cross the picket line during a strike, and also the "right" of the union to decide that such actions were incompatible with union membership.

Both of these positions are equally tenable for a civil libertarian. A majority of delegates at NCCL's AGM decided however that the collective "right" to strike took precedence over the "right" of the individual to carry on working during a strike. Their argument was that the strike weapon — the most effective weapon that workers have against their employers — is undermined if the majority of union members do not support the strike and so their "collective right" can be rendered useless by individuals exercising their "right" to dissent.

One can't avoid the feeling that those who support this position have taken a number of ingredients (as contained in NCCL's Charter) which they like the sound of, mixed them up and have then become disappointed when they can't stomach the resulting cake — that is, that civil liberties, according to their recipe, also apply to people whose actions they find unacceptable. At the AGM they tried to change the recipe by saying that there should be a little more "collective rights" and a little less "individual rights". Several of the cooks of the original cake took offence and resigned.

However, it has not occurred to any of the protagonists as yet that maybe they need a completely new recipe. An organisation like NCCL whose intention is to defend civil liberties (however they are defined) is only necessary in a society in which the "liberties" of citizens can be curtailed by "governmental or other agencies". In most cases this means incursions by the state — the police, courts, army, government — or by those who hold economic power, the capitalist class, against those who are powerless in society. These two institutions, the state and the capitalist class, are not independent of each other. On the contrary, they live in a symbiotic relationship: the capitalist class, the minority who own and control the means of producing wealth in society, require the state to defend and administer their interests and the state would be unable to function without the resources that the capitalist class grants it. NCCL seeks to defend people from what they regard as the unjustifiable use of state power but to do that within the very system — capitalism — which itself creates the need for the state.

The coal strike exposed the diametrically opposed class interests of workers and the capitalist class. Both sides in the dispute expressed these interests in terms of "rights the right of the Coal Board to manage (to close pits that didn't produce enough profit) and the right of NUM members to express their opposition to pit closures by taking strike action. Some miners did not see the dispute in these terms and mistakenly thought that their interests were better served by continuing to work and claimed the "right" to do so.

While organisations like NCCL and the trade union movement can fight to preserve rights we should never forget what the "right to work" and the "right to strike" really mean. The right to work amounts to little more than the right to sell our labour power for a wage or salary so that we and our families can live. It means spending a considerable amount of time engaged in work that we may not enjoy and from which we, as workers, never derive any benefit. The right to strike is one of the few weapons that the working class has at its disposal to use against capital to prevent working conditions and living standards from being driven down still further. It should be used cautiously since it is the weapon of last resort and entails considerable hardship and suffering for workers engaged in strike action.

Where then does this leave NCCL? If it is to be a consistently civil libertarian organisation that applies the principles set out in its constitution and Charter, and works within capitalism without concerning itself with social justice, then it must accept all the contradictions that that will entail and also the possibility of upholding the "rights" of individuals whose views or actions it finds abhorrent.

Perhaps at least some workers among NCCL's members will have been led by this argument to look more closely at the whole issue of civil liberties and to question the value of trying to defend such rights and liberty in the context of a system of society which itself constantly acts as a fetter on the freedom of all workers — that is the freedom to democratically control the society in which we live and the wealth we produce.

Janie Percy-Smith