Among the various reform movements in the countries of the so-called free world, there is one which is devoted to improving the lot of prisoners. It is, by its very nature, doomed to be a Cinderella among reforms. After all, only a small minority of people are liable to be in gaol and so most people don't tend to get too worked up about the matter. “If they don't like prison conditions, let them go straight” is the view of the average “free” worker when taxed with the matter. Still more important, no doubt. is the sad fact that there are not enough people in gaol at any one time to make them into a sizeable vote for politicians to woo with promises of better things to come. In England, for example, the various parties vie with one another from time to time in wooing tenants and sometimes bring in legislation which may well make life difficult for landlords whose votes are naturally less important than those of tenants. (It is a well-known feature of capitalism that from time to time, the interests of one group of capitalists will be sacrificed for the common good of the capitalists as a whole). But in most countries, prisoners, besides being few in numbers, do not even have a vote to sell.
The press cries out
Every so often, however, the papers have a splash about the degrading hardships of prison conditions. There has recently been not so much an amelioration of conditions as a distinct worsening largely due to the tightening of security in many prisons owing to the increasing number of escapes. This feature has itself been caused partly by the increasingly technical organization of crime which can sometimes engineer spectacular escapes and partly because of the desperate need to escape felt by prisoners who are the victims of savage thirty-year sentences now handed out by the courts for crimes like espionage, or the “Great Train Robbery,” where capitalist society felt the need to avenge itself on workers who aped their betters by stealing a couple of million pounds in one go.
When the papers are in this mood it is natural that publicity will be given to the few prisoners who are able to express articulately their opinions of the conditions they endured whilst serving their sentences. Equally naturally, such educated prisoners are readily found in the ranks of those convicted of political crimes. (It would, perhaps, be a little misleading to use the term “political prisoners” as this conjures up the image of people like Sinyavsky and Daniel in Russia, serving savage terms and being treated with rigorous harshness, not for defying the law of the land but merely for daring to exercise so-called constitutional rights.) So that one readily expected a paper like the liberal “Guardian” to feature letters from ex-convicts of this ilk when the subject was in fashion a few months ago. And it is perhaps worth studying some features of two letters which were prominently featured in that paper.
Don't say "hypocrite" in Church
The writers were Nicolas Walter and George Clark, both of them well-known members of Protest Movements, a side of reformism that has become prominent in many countries in recent years. Walter's imprisonment is worth a mention in itself as the conviction in his case was a particularly nasty business. He attended a church service where the lesson (on the subject of peace) was read by Harold Wilson, the pseudo-socialist Prime Minister and George Brown, at that time his deputy. Being concerned at their government's continued support of the American war effort in Vietnam, they felt that it was rather hypocritical of these gentlemen to preach peace in church on the eve of a Labour Party conference. And in England, the mother-country of free speech, Walter and his friends were convicted and sentenced merely for calling hypocrites by their proper names, in church. Even Labour leaders could not have secured convictions if they had been called such names in the street. (Nor could they have sued for damages in a civil court because Walter would have no difficulty in convincing a jury that “hypocrite" was a true description. And truth is a good defence to slander In law.) But it seems there is some ancient law regarding sacrilege which is almost never used; and this was good enough for Labour leaders to get their revenge. It is doubtful if avowed capitalist leaders, like the Conservatives, would have dared to proceed on such lines.
The letters themselves follow the usual pattern that one knows so well. All reformers have no difficulty in showing the evils of their pet aversion. Walter himself, a well-known Campaigner for Nuclear Disarmament, would have no difficulty in telling a tale of horror about Hiroshima any more than here about prison life. But in the letter from Clark there was a passage which would be of particular interest to socialists. “Since working in Notting Hill (a slummy area of London), I am struck by the similarity of conditions which exist . . . People are living in rooms scarcely larger than a cell in the Scrubs. The general atmosphere is one of all-pervasive horror . . ."
The Prison of Capitalism
So here is one prisoner who has spotted that, for many workers, the harsh conditions of ordinary working class life, even in a great modern capital city like London (so much for the theory now so fashionable that the harshness of poverty belongs only to the so-called under-developed countries), are but a reflection of life in prison. Needless to say, there is nothing new or surprising in all this. It would indeed be surprising were things other than they are under capitalism. Where the mass of humanity is regarded as primarily raw material for producing profits for a small minority, it follows naturally that their living conditions should be less than pleasant in the great prison which capitalism makes of the world.
Unfortunately, the conclusion that Clark comes to as a result of his experience is rather less than convincing. He appeals to the Home Secretary Mr. Callaghan (in whose sphere prison administration lies) to consider: “What kind of life are they going to return to?" Can anyone really imagine that the very man who was recently, as Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of devaluation, one of the foremost managers of the interests of the British capitalist class and who had the whole population following the monthly trade returns, balance of payments, gold stock etc. with as avid interest as football pools (the workers' key to the gates of paradise), could such an obviously fraudulent socialist possibly do anything to alter the conditions of life which are part and parcel of the present system of society? One has merely to ask the question for the very notion to seem ludicrous. And it is sad to see an articulate, feeling member of the working class seemingly getting near to the heart of the matter and then waffling away into such hopelessly unrealistic attempts at solution. And to think that we socialists are the ones who are often called unrealistic or utopian. Could anything be more utopian than to hope for sweetness and light among the animals whilst leaving the jungle intact? And how ironically futile to appeal to the humanitarianism of these “socialist" managers of capitalism to alleviate conditions in prisons when it is precisely under their rule that the conditions have been made so much worse.
Contrary to the opinions of some misguided critics, we socialists are as pleased as the next man when reforms are instituted which achieve some amelioration in the conditions of capitalism. It makes us a little happier if we hear that the powers that be are less brutal in their treatment of prisoners, for example. But the pathetic attitude of people like Clark who fondly imagine that it is possible, while retaining the degrading social set-up which he himself sees produces conditions for “free” workers that are little better than those endured by prisoners, to achieve anything but the merest superficial advantage (usually illusory, invariably transitory and liable to be swept away by the next government or even the same one), this attitude sometimes makes even a case-hardened socialist scratch his head and wonder if it is possible for people to see the simple, glaring truth: which is that a society whose whole ethos is the production of profit out of the sweat and degradation of most human beings, can never be reformed into a human society. Humanity is imprisoned by capitalism. When that prison is broken down, then, and only then, will the prisons within the prison themselves disappear.
L. E. Weidberg,
S.P.G.B.
