Capitalism can, but does not inevitably, produce either class or socialist consciousness
There is debate among the left today about the passivity of ordinary working people in Britain and elsewhere in the face of mushrooming inequality and general economic insecurity. But what, if anything, do developments tell us about working class and socialist consciousness?
In the last two centuries, the development of capitalism in western Europe produced the preconditions for class consciousness, i.e. a relatively homogenous geographically-stable proletariat which experienced a shared sense of its own exploitation and oppression. The working class - if here understood to be all those who live by selling their labour power - came to comprise a majority of the population; and a majority of those who were working class saw themselves as such.
Class consciousness is a necessary but an insufficient condition for socialist (or even social democratic) consciousness: if self-recognition of class were all that were needed, then socialism would have been successfully achieved in Western Europe and in North America. What went wrong?
Marx was right to suggest that capitalism produced within itself the seeds (i.e. the potential) for its own destruction (i.e. a vast exploited working class with an interest in transforming the system), but was wrong in his prediction that proletarian concentration, homogenisation and universal impoverishment would (i) continue uninterrupted as an sociological fact, and (ii) that – even if it did – it would of itself lead to socialist consciousness. History has taught us otherwise.
The movement for social progress - whether for amelioration of conditions within capitalism or for the overthrow of capitalism altogether - is political. The production and reception of political ideas and practices are indeed influenced in major part by the class structure, but politics is not a mere reflection of class structure. Political structures and systems of ideas exist to some extent independently of class relations, have their own history and rhythms of development.
Looking at Britain in the last decades, it seems that the development of the working class, in all its economic and political aspects, can facilitate socialist consciousness, as it did in Britain in the last century up until the 1970s (Hobsbawm: The Forward March of Labour Halted). Or capitalist development can undermine both class and socialist consciousness in the working class, as has happened under market fundamentalism which has held sway from the 1980s. The actual situation depends on a combination of economic, political and ideological factors, which is why the answers are always going to be found in analysis not dogma.
28 March 2015
13 February 2015
Police surveillance of Charlie Hebdo magazine purchasers
Police collected the names of those ordering the special edition of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, in all probability to include on a national database of people politically active in the UK.
On 7 January 2015 two marginalised and alienated French nationals - armed with guns and a Muslim-inspired fascist ideology - went on a rampage of murder in the editorial offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine. People in France and across the world were rightly outraged that journalists should be murdered for ridiculing religion. In defence of free speech and in solidarity people sought to purchase the special edition of the magazine which was published after the murders.
Nevertheless, in the Britain in 2015 people interested in controversial magazines from abroad - however understandable the motive - is not something which the police will ignore.
Four people ordered the magazine from a newsagent in Corsham in Wiltshire. Police visited the newsagent and demanded the names of the customers. When the police action came to light on 10 February, it was deemed a mistake and an isolated event. Names were to be deleted from police computers.
But the following day, it emerged that the same police enquires had been made in Presteigne in Wales and, by telephone, in Warrington in Cheshire. Two things became almost certain. First, that there were many investigations across the country into Charlie Hebdo readers, in addition to those we already know about. And secondly, the investigations were no isolated incidents, but a policy instructed from the top.
Police say that they were making “an assessment of community tensions.” Utter bilge! What community tensions involving militant Islam is there in rural Wales and in the countryside of Wiltshire. The idea that these police enquiries contribute to combating Islamic terrorism doesn't hold water, either: the Charlie Hebdo magazine is among the last things devout Muslims would purchase.
What this snooping is about, it would seem, is nothing more than the police and the security services building a database of all those who are in any way politically active in the UK. If they are prepared to go to such lengths, deploying police time in rural England and Wales to pick up a couple of names, then one can only imagine what effort is probably put into monitoring political activity on the internet.
On 7 January 2015 two marginalised and alienated French nationals - armed with guns and a Muslim-inspired fascist ideology - went on a rampage of murder in the editorial offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine. People in France and across the world were rightly outraged that journalists should be murdered for ridiculing religion. In defence of free speech and in solidarity people sought to purchase the special edition of the magazine which was published after the murders.
Nevertheless, in the Britain in 2015 people interested in controversial magazines from abroad - however understandable the motive - is not something which the police will ignore.
Four people ordered the magazine from a newsagent in Corsham in Wiltshire. Police visited the newsagent and demanded the names of the customers. When the police action came to light on 10 February, it was deemed a mistake and an isolated event. Names were to be deleted from police computers.
But the following day, it emerged that the same police enquires had been made in Presteigne in Wales and, by telephone, in Warrington in Cheshire. Two things became almost certain. First, that there were many investigations across the country into Charlie Hebdo readers, in addition to those we already know about. And secondly, the investigations were no isolated incidents, but a policy instructed from the top.
Police say that they were making “an assessment of community tensions.” Utter bilge! What community tensions involving militant Islam is there in rural Wales and in the countryside of Wiltshire. The idea that these police enquiries contribute to combating Islamic terrorism doesn't hold water, either: the Charlie Hebdo magazine is among the last things devout Muslims would purchase.
What this snooping is about, it would seem, is nothing more than the police and the security services building a database of all those who are in any way politically active in the UK. If they are prepared to go to such lengths, deploying police time in rural England and Wales to pick up a couple of names, then one can only imagine what effort is probably put into monitoring political activity on the internet.
7 February 2015
Cameron wants to outlaw encrypted messaging
David Cameron’s desire, however impractical, to outlaw the citizen’s use of end-to end encryption to enable the security services to view every private communication is a an assault on freedom.
Events in Paris on 7 January 2015 were truly horrific. Two marginalised and alienated people - armed with guns and a Muslim-inspired fascist ideology - went on a rampage of murder in the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. France and the world were rightly outraged.
In Britain, cashing in the terror, David Cameron took his chance to push for a ban on end-to-end encryption, even though the terrorists in France never used encryption. End-to-end encryption is the means by which you encrypt a message on your own computer and send the message to someone else who decrypts it on his or hers. GCHQ and the NSA can’t read the data either in transit or from the internet giants’ servers. Apple’s new iphone and several messaging apps do the same thing.
In fact, you can get a small file which enables end-to-end text encryption here.
In his speech Cameron asked, “...in our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?” Well, yes we do. It is not just a matter of a fundamental right of people to be able to talk and write to one another without the security services reading and listening, but we know full well that state snooping of private correspondence is used to impede legitimate political activity by ordinary people.
Cameron and his government are a far greater threat to freedom than a handful of fanatical killers in Paris.
Events in Paris on 7 January 2015 were truly horrific. Two marginalised and alienated people - armed with guns and a Muslim-inspired fascist ideology - went on a rampage of murder in the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. France and the world were rightly outraged.
In Britain, cashing in the terror, David Cameron took his chance to push for a ban on end-to-end encryption, even though the terrorists in France never used encryption. End-to-end encryption is the means by which you encrypt a message on your own computer and send the message to someone else who decrypts it on his or hers. GCHQ and the NSA can’t read the data either in transit or from the internet giants’ servers. Apple’s new iphone and several messaging apps do the same thing.
In fact, you can get a small file which enables end-to-end text encryption here.
In his speech Cameron asked, “...in our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?” Well, yes we do. It is not just a matter of a fundamental right of people to be able to talk and write to one another without the security services reading and listening, but we know full well that state snooping of private correspondence is used to impede legitimate political activity by ordinary people.
Cameron and his government are a far greater threat to freedom than a handful of fanatical killers in Paris.
1 February 2015
Britain's war on investigative journalism
Free journalism is the last remaining source of opposition in Britain. That is why the state ranks journalists alongside terrorists as a threat.
With the demise of mass progressive organisations in the last few decades, one of the few remaining sources of critique of the existing political order is the writing of journalists. So today, it is the likes of Glenn Greenwald and George Monbiot who carry the torch of political opposition, rather than politicians.
It is hardly surprising that, according to documents from the Snowden cache, GCHQ in Britain ranks investigative journalists alongside terrorists and hackers as targets worthy of surveillance. In a single trawl in 2008 GCHQ harvested around 70 000 emails from journalists working for the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post. The results were placed on the GCHQ intranet for analysis by agents.
The mass hoovering up of electronic communication by the security agencies is now an established fact. The legality of doing so only comes into a play when some of these ill-gotten fruits of mass surveillance need to be brought into the public domain, such as for a court case. To this end, in Britain the state uses RIPA, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which inter alia empowers police to access journalists’ electronic communication without a court order with only the approval of senior officers. Just to take two instances: In the so-called Plebgate affair, police used RIPA powers to access the phone records of a journalist working for the Sun; and the records of a Mail on Sunday journalist were similarly acquired in the Chris Huhne speeding affair. Neither case involved terrorism or serious crime.
Investigative journalism remains one the last means of critiquing political power in Britain. It is under attack, and one small step of resistance is to achieve secure communication by encrypting phone speech and email, end-to-end. Of course that does nothing to hide the metadata - who’s contacting whom, when and for how long - but it shuts GCHQ and the police out of the content. David Cameron doesn’t like that, and that’s why he would like to ban it.
With the demise of mass progressive organisations in the last few decades, one of the few remaining sources of critique of the existing political order is the writing of journalists. So today, it is the likes of Glenn Greenwald and George Monbiot who carry the torch of political opposition, rather than politicians.
It is hardly surprising that, according to documents from the Snowden cache, GCHQ in Britain ranks investigative journalists alongside terrorists and hackers as targets worthy of surveillance. In a single trawl in 2008 GCHQ harvested around 70 000 emails from journalists working for the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post. The results were placed on the GCHQ intranet for analysis by agents.
The mass hoovering up of electronic communication by the security agencies is now an established fact. The legality of doing so only comes into a play when some of these ill-gotten fruits of mass surveillance need to be brought into the public domain, such as for a court case. To this end, in Britain the state uses RIPA, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, which inter alia empowers police to access journalists’ electronic communication without a court order with only the approval of senior officers. Just to take two instances: In the so-called Plebgate affair, police used RIPA powers to access the phone records of a journalist working for the Sun; and the records of a Mail on Sunday journalist were similarly acquired in the Chris Huhne speeding affair. Neither case involved terrorism or serious crime.
Investigative journalism remains one the last means of critiquing political power in Britain. It is under attack, and one small step of resistance is to achieve secure communication by encrypting phone speech and email, end-to-end. Of course that does nothing to hide the metadata - who’s contacting whom, when and for how long - but it shuts GCHQ and the police out of the content. David Cameron doesn’t like that, and that’s why he would like to ban it.
The end of student life
Student university life is a potent and necessary experience, but it is ephemeral.
I left university in 1983. Nearly a decade later in 1992, I found myself with time on my hands to do some thinking and realised that the emotional introspective life of our our university years had given way, for most of us at least, to an angst-ridden, time-conscious, but more focussed existence.
Back in 1984, in an act of catharsis while unemployed in bedsit land, I had written the novella University Years, which had sought to portray and parody student university life. And nine years later, still with a manual typewriter, I found the time to type up the the scattered and scrappy manuscript. While doing so, I was reminded repeatedly of the contrast between our current attitude to life and to each other, which we now experienced as young people approaching thirty, and how we had seen the world at the beginning of the the 1980s as students at Exeter University.
At the time it seemed impossible to complete University Years and ignore the extent to which our lives and outlooks had changed. So to give effect to this point, I planned to make all the events in University Years a flashback, and begin the novella with a scene showing my character Martin’s current married life as a university academic, a man who is now anxious, pushed for time, and put out by the inconvenience of meeting up with Brian, his former university friend and housemate. I wrote a new beginning for the novella and then dumped the idea, mostly because I did not want to fundamentally alter the original text written in 1984.
The planned opening of the novella, a mere 351 words, written subjectively form Martin’s viewpoint, is below. The chapter would have been entitled: Anxiety: meeting Brian.
How quickly he went downhill after leaving university.
I received a letter from Brian this morning. It’s bothered me all day at work because I can’t think why Brian should want to see me. He said he’d have to drive up from Surrey after work a week next Friday. He can spend the night here, of course, but why does he want to contact me after all this time? We left university over ten years ago now, and apart from the funeral the following year, I haven’t seen him since. All we do these days is exchange Christmas cards; we’ve even given up writing short letters on them. I suppose we don’t have much in common; he’s a solicitor and I’m a university lecturer. He has children and I don’t.
I’m not sure that I want to get involved with Brian again. I’ve got so much on – my third year course on East European politics. My European politics post grads are causing me to work like hell at the moment. I want to finish the paper on the history of Czech/Slovak relations for next month. I’m bogged down with marking.
It can’t be money he wants, and surely he wouldn’t come to me on account of his marriage. I’m not sure he’ll get on with Myra. We’ll have to do a shop for two formal meals. Brian is coming on Friday the fifth, and Ruth and Ivan are coming on the Saturday.
At least Myra is preparing some food this evening.
I’ve grown attached to this room in our house, which is now my office. I’ve got so much paper here, and I need a second filing cabinet. I also need to put bookshelves in that other alcove on Saturday. The carpet is almost worn through between the word processor and my writing desk.
Myra has just called me downstairs to eat. I wonder how her teaching went today. We’ll eat, have a coffee, do the washing up together, and then I really need to get back to work. I also need to let Brian know that he can stay here.
I left university in 1983. Nearly a decade later in 1992, I found myself with time on my hands to do some thinking and realised that the emotional introspective life of our our university years had given way, for most of us at least, to an angst-ridden, time-conscious, but more focussed existence.
Back in 1984, in an act of catharsis while unemployed in bedsit land, I had written the novella University Years, which had sought to portray and parody student university life. And nine years later, still with a manual typewriter, I found the time to type up the the scattered and scrappy manuscript. While doing so, I was reminded repeatedly of the contrast between our current attitude to life and to each other, which we now experienced as young people approaching thirty, and how we had seen the world at the beginning of the the 1980s as students at Exeter University.
At the time it seemed impossible to complete University Years and ignore the extent to which our lives and outlooks had changed. So to give effect to this point, I planned to make all the events in University Years a flashback, and begin the novella with a scene showing my character Martin’s current married life as a university academic, a man who is now anxious, pushed for time, and put out by the inconvenience of meeting up with Brian, his former university friend and housemate. I wrote a new beginning for the novella and then dumped the idea, mostly because I did not want to fundamentally alter the original text written in 1984.
The planned opening of the novella, a mere 351 words, written subjectively form Martin’s viewpoint, is below. The chapter would have been entitled: Anxiety: meeting Brian.
How quickly he went downhill after leaving university.
I received a letter from Brian this morning. It’s bothered me all day at work because I can’t think why Brian should want to see me. He said he’d have to drive up from Surrey after work a week next Friday. He can spend the night here, of course, but why does he want to contact me after all this time? We left university over ten years ago now, and apart from the funeral the following year, I haven’t seen him since. All we do these days is exchange Christmas cards; we’ve even given up writing short letters on them. I suppose we don’t have much in common; he’s a solicitor and I’m a university lecturer. He has children and I don’t.
I’m not sure that I want to get involved with Brian again. I’ve got so much on – my third year course on East European politics. My European politics post grads are causing me to work like hell at the moment. I want to finish the paper on the history of Czech/Slovak relations for next month. I’m bogged down with marking.
It can’t be money he wants, and surely he wouldn’t come to me on account of his marriage. I’m not sure he’ll get on with Myra. We’ll have to do a shop for two formal meals. Brian is coming on Friday the fifth, and Ruth and Ivan are coming on the Saturday.
At least Myra is preparing some food this evening.
I’ve grown attached to this room in our house, which is now my office. I’ve got so much paper here, and I need a second filing cabinet. I also need to put bookshelves in that other alcove on Saturday. The carpet is almost worn through between the word processor and my writing desk.
Myra has just called me downstairs to eat. I wonder how her teaching went today. We’ll eat, have a coffee, do the washing up together, and then I really need to get back to work. I also need to let Brian know that he can stay here.
25 January 2015
Tony Benn (1925-2014): the death of a political giant
The death of Tony Benn in March 2014 was a psychological blow for the political left in Britain.
Tony Benn was the most admirable British politician in the whole post war era.
In the 1970s Benn signalled in the Labour Party a way forward, not just as an alternative to Thatcherism and authoritarian market fundamentalism, but as a solution to the shortcoings of 1960s and 1970s social democracy. His 1981 defeat to Denis Healey in the battle for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party sadly indicated the start of a process which ended with victory for New Labour in the Party in 1990s.
Benn, unusually for British politicians, was a great moralist and teacher, and invariably presented his ideas in spellbinding orations, rather than through the pen, with even his diaries consisting mostly of written up recordings. Some of his famous aphorisms will always stay with me.
“It’s man’s capacity for good that makes democracy possible. It’s man’s capacity for bad which makes democracy necessary.”
“I do ask people not to dwell too long on the theoretical differences between reform and revolution. I think if you added up all the reforms we want to make in the structure of society, people could not distinguish it from a revolution.”
“It’s not that we have reformed and failed, but we have failed to reform.”
Yet, Benn’s appeal to the moral high ground came at a price. Despite his position and influence in the Party, when his own Bristol constituency was abolished in boundary changes in 1983, he accepted defeat in the candidate selection process in the safe Bristol South seat. Rather than bunk off to a safe seat elsewhere, Benn remained loyal to the town of Bristol. He was accepted for marginal Bristol East where he lost to the Conservative candidate. Only then did he relocate to the mining constituency of Chesterfield, where he won a by-election in 1984, a seat he held until his retirement from Parliament in 2001.
Even after the left was crushed and marginalised in the late 1980s, he remained loyal to Labour – and I think mistakenly so - but he never capitulated to New Labour thinking.
Tony Benn’s death is a very great loss. He is sadly missed.
Tony Benn was the most admirable British politician in the whole post war era.
In the 1970s Benn signalled in the Labour Party a way forward, not just as an alternative to Thatcherism and authoritarian market fundamentalism, but as a solution to the shortcoings of 1960s and 1970s social democracy. His 1981 defeat to Denis Healey in the battle for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party sadly indicated the start of a process which ended with victory for New Labour in the Party in 1990s.
Benn, unusually for British politicians, was a great moralist and teacher, and invariably presented his ideas in spellbinding orations, rather than through the pen, with even his diaries consisting mostly of written up recordings. Some of his famous aphorisms will always stay with me.
“It’s man’s capacity for good that makes democracy possible. It’s man’s capacity for bad which makes democracy necessary.”
“I do ask people not to dwell too long on the theoretical differences between reform and revolution. I think if you added up all the reforms we want to make in the structure of society, people could not distinguish it from a revolution.”
“It’s not that we have reformed and failed, but we have failed to reform.”
Yet, Benn’s appeal to the moral high ground came at a price. Despite his position and influence in the Party, when his own Bristol constituency was abolished in boundary changes in 1983, he accepted defeat in the candidate selection process in the safe Bristol South seat. Rather than bunk off to a safe seat elsewhere, Benn remained loyal to the town of Bristol. He was accepted for marginal Bristol East where he lost to the Conservative candidate. Only then did he relocate to the mining constituency of Chesterfield, where he won a by-election in 1984, a seat he held until his retirement from Parliament in 2001.
Even after the left was crushed and marginalised in the late 1980s, he remained loyal to Labour – and I think mistakenly so - but he never capitulated to New Labour thinking.
Tony Benn’s death is a very great loss. He is sadly missed.
1 January 2015
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok shows us a closed world, but one with universalistic human values.
Like Potok's 'The Chosen,’ this book ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ is a highly readable glimpse into a world which is both open and closed. It is open in the sense that the orthodox religious Jewish community in the United States, in which the book is set, not only shares a meaning and context which spans the Atlantic, but allows though Potok’s pen for the presentation of universal human values. But in another sense this community is also closed and cut off – almost comically so - from most of the life and concerns of average Americans in the second half of the twentieth century.
Like much of Potok’s work, the novel is a Romansbildung, featuring a boy from a distinguished orthodox family, who discovers and takes up painting much to his father’s disapproval. His longing for the artistic freedom finally causes his unwilling but expected expulsion from his community into the wider society.
The book is well-paced, excellently written and highly enjoyable.
POTOK, Chaim, My name is Asher Lev, Penguin 1973
Like Potok's 'The Chosen,’ this book ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ is a highly readable glimpse into a world which is both open and closed. It is open in the sense that the orthodox religious Jewish community in the United States, in which the book is set, not only shares a meaning and context which spans the Atlantic, but allows though Potok’s pen for the presentation of universal human values. But in another sense this community is also closed and cut off – almost comically so - from most of the life and concerns of average Americans in the second half of the twentieth century.
Like much of Potok’s work, the novel is a Romansbildung, featuring a boy from a distinguished orthodox family, who discovers and takes up painting much to his father’s disapproval. His longing for the artistic freedom finally causes his unwilling but expected expulsion from his community into the wider society.
The book is well-paced, excellently written and highly enjoyable.
POTOK, Chaim, My name is Asher Lev, Penguin 1973
A national government for Britain in 2015?
Every time the political situation in Britain is not straightforward, there are voices saying that there will be a return to national government, last seen 1931-45.
Of course anything in the future can happen, but it seems highly likely that following the 2015 General Election in May this year either the Tories or Labour will emerge as the single largest party in Parliament with the other in second position. By British convention the party with the largest number of seats will be invited to form a government, and if not successful the remit will fall to second party. It is highly improbable that neither Cameron nor Miliband would be unable to form a government which would not immediately fall in a parliamentary vote of no confidence. UKIP and the Northern Ireland Unionists would lean towards the Tories, while the SNP (likely to emerge as a major player in 2015) along with Plaid Cymru and the Greens (if they win seats) would favour Labour. The Liberal Democrats would get into bed with anyone, and it is unlikely after an electoral beating in May 2015 they would want a second general election.
In any event, a coalition only between the Tories and Labour would be, to borrow German terminology, a “grand coalition,” not a national government. Such a government, if only because it was so unexpected and would deny the voters any say in the direction of the country, would be unpopular and would soon haemorrhage support to the left (mainly the Greens, but also the SNP in Scotland) and to the right (UKIP). Recent opinion polls put support for a Tory/Lab coalition as the preferred outcome of a hung parliament at a mere 9 percent. Anticipating low levels of public support and votes falling away, a grand coalition would be the last choice for both Cameron and Miliband, or their successors.
A “national government” is not impossible, but it is highly unlikely.
Of course anything in the future can happen, but it seems highly likely that following the 2015 General Election in May this year either the Tories or Labour will emerge as the single largest party in Parliament with the other in second position. By British convention the party with the largest number of seats will be invited to form a government, and if not successful the remit will fall to second party. It is highly improbable that neither Cameron nor Miliband would be unable to form a government which would not immediately fall in a parliamentary vote of no confidence. UKIP and the Northern Ireland Unionists would lean towards the Tories, while the SNP (likely to emerge as a major player in 2015) along with Plaid Cymru and the Greens (if they win seats) would favour Labour. The Liberal Democrats would get into bed with anyone, and it is unlikely after an electoral beating in May 2015 they would want a second general election.
In any event, a coalition only between the Tories and Labour would be, to borrow German terminology, a “grand coalition,” not a national government. Such a government, if only because it was so unexpected and would deny the voters any say in the direction of the country, would be unpopular and would soon haemorrhage support to the left (mainly the Greens, but also the SNP in Scotland) and to the right (UKIP). Recent opinion polls put support for a Tory/Lab coalition as the preferred outcome of a hung parliament at a mere 9 percent. Anticipating low levels of public support and votes falling away, a grand coalition would be the last choice for both Cameron and Miliband, or their successors.
A “national government” is not impossible, but it is highly unlikely.
11 December 2014
Metric Measurements in Britain
Britain should go fully metric.
Metric measurements should be used in full across Britain as soon as possible. We should change, not because Brussels demands it (although they don’t anymore), but because the British see the sense in the reform.
Several generations of school students have now learnt metric measurements, and the current mixture of imperial and metric measurements creates a completely unnecessary muddle. It’s a sad day when serious people think that Britishness is somehow dependent on retaining an outdated and illogical system for counting height, weight and volume.
Metric measurements should be used in full across Britain as soon as possible. We should change, not because Brussels demands it (although they don’t anymore), but because the British see the sense in the reform.
Several generations of school students have now learnt metric measurements, and the current mixture of imperial and metric measurements creates a completely unnecessary muddle. It’s a sad day when serious people think that Britishness is somehow dependent on retaining an outdated and illogical system for counting height, weight and volume.
1 November 2014
Riots in England: Summer 2011
Britain’s urban rioting of August 2011 strengthened the hand of the state, the police and the political right.
The riots were not the work of a single social group with one cause. The spark for the initial Tottenham riot was the police shooting a young black man sitting in the back of a taxi. Matters were made worse when the authorities claimed that he had fired at them when in fact he hadn’t. The situation was further inflamed by the police refusing to discuss the death with the dead man’s family, who were peacefully assembled outside the police station in a small demonstration made up of relatives, friends and community leaders.
A local ethnic riot of rage in Tottenham could not have spread across the land, engulfing several English cities, particularly London, if the country hadn’t been a tinderbox waiting to go up in flames.
In parts of London and then some other British cities (Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham), the young unemployed - impoverished, and alienated, but brought up in a society in which consumer possessions were elevated to the purpose of life - revolted and sought to steal electronic goods, designer clothing and much else from High Street stores. An orgy of rioting and looting ensued.
In the mayhem criminals and criminal gangs entered the fray engaging in systematic looting, arson and mugging of passers-by – and in a couple of cases, murder. The situation was further compounded by the creation in many parts of London of a macabre carnival atmosphere as shop after shop was looted and burnt; and funseekers from all social backgrounds joined in.
Some on the political left might even feel an element of Schadenfreude in seeing the poor and the excluded taking to the streets to vent their anger. But the rioters, save for a few small contingents of anarchists, lacked any kind of conscious political purpose. The rioters and looters’ target was not just large commercial property, but also that of private individuals and small traders. The hooded youths were smashing up their own communities in which they obviously felt they had no stake.
Inevitably, the target of much of the violence was the police; for it is the police whose job it is to physically bend bodies so they cooperate with the social order, a social order which is so unfair to so many. But no society can tolerate rampant criminality; so the police with widespread public backing suppressed the riots. By the end, armoured vehicles appeared on the streets of London and permission had been given for discharge of plastic bullets, though these were not used.
After the 1981 riots – the only riots comparable in modern British history - the left still existed as a political force and Tory “wets” still present in the government were apprehensive about a full-scale junking of the post-war consensus. None of that applies today and the reaction of the state has been one of enhancing repression and eschewing any form in social understanding in favour of punishment.
The riots restored the empathy between that "moral majority" and the police. The G20 demonstrations in April 2009 and the killing of Ian Tomlinson had seriously weakened people’s perception of the police, but that has now been forgotten. Opinion polls showed overwhelming support for the police, much more so than they did for the governments handing of the crisis. The future for civil liberties is bleak. When in the future peaceful demonstrators are beaten by police, sympathy beyond small liberal circles will be slight.
Popular punophilia: public lust for punishment
The state reaction to the rioting was swift and brutal, symbolised by the police battering-ram used in dawn raids to smash in the front doors of alleged looters, all eagerly filmed by TV film crews. The police adopted a policy of arrest, detention and the denial of bail to anyone allegedly guilty of any riot-related offence, however trivial.
Magistrates’ courts sat in twenty-four hour sessions dispensing rushed summary justice for the thousand or so people (mostly young, unemployed men) who were arrested during or after the riots. The charges are various: theft, burglary, possession of stolen goods, violent disorder, assault, resisting arrest, etc.
The law was perverted in two ways in its dealing with people arrested during the riots. First, those defendants who pleaded guilty to even minor offences received custodial sentences of around six months when normally such misdoings would incur fines or community service. A penalty supplement was added for crimes committed during the riots. Below is one typical case reported by The Guardian:
At Camberwell Green magistrates, Nicholas Robinson, 23, an electrical engineering student with no previous convictions, was jailed for the maximum permitted six months after pleading guilty to stealing bottles of water worth £3.50 from Lidl in Brixton. He had been walking back from his girlfriend's house in the early hours of Monday morning when he saw the store being looted, his lawyer said, and had taken the opportunity to go in and help himself to a case of water because he was thirsty
The severity of sentences for offences committed during the riots was later approved by senior judges. Thus opportunist theft against commercial retailers during civil disorder was regarded as more serious than the burglary of residential property. The pro-business bias is obvious.
The severity of sentencing led to some interesting contrasts. Shortly after Nicolas Robinson was jailed for six moths for stealing a bottle of water, Rebecca Balira was jailed for the same length of time for keeping a Tanzanian woman as a slave and assaulting her.
Second, some 60% of those pleading not guilty in court were remanded in custody rather than being given bail. In normal circumstances only around 10% would be remanded. The accused were incarcerated before trial, not because they might abscond, interfere with witnesses, etc, but simply to punish them. This is contrary to to the basic rule: innocent until proved guilty.
The scenes of rioting have engendered fear and anger among ordinary people, so there is a popular demand among the public to crack down rioters and looters with 70% of the population supporting harsher sentence for offences committed during the riots. However, the behaviour of the government and magistrates is itself undermining the the independence of the judiciary as judges respond to political pressure from the state and the government. One judicial official even went as far to describe emails from civil servants requesting exemplary punishments as “directives” to impose stiffer penalties on riot-related offences.
But this kind of arbitrary severity is unlikely to be effective. In the next six months a thousand young men will emerge from prison, angry, unemployed and in many cases homeless. So the fuel is being made for yet more disorder.
Children and the riots
Among those arrested and charged during and after the riots were 269 children. Over 40 percent of these children had been held in pre-trial detention: a majority (some 60 percent) had no previous criminal record. According to Britain’s obligation under international law, the imprisonment of children should only be considered as a last resource. Instead children were used as pawns in Cameron’s law-and-order populism.
Britain has the highest rate of juvenile incarceration in Europe.
Welfare and social housing
The lust for punishment of riot-related offenders is not satisfied by long prison sentences. Government is promoting two further measures with much popular backing. Local councils are being encouraged to evict the whole family of the offender from their social or council provided housing. Thus not only is the offender to be made homeless, but his (or her) whole family. Such collective punishment (i.e. of the innocent with the perpetrator) is contrary to every principle of justice. At the time of writing, several evictions are under way, but none has so far been endorsed by the courts. The second policy is to withdraw unemployment and other social security support from offenders. To date, legislation to do this has not yet been passed.
England is thus currently caught up in a hysterical loss of proportion. Opportunist thieves who picked up looted goods from the street or entered already broken into shops face many months of imprisonment and loss of social security entitlements on their release. If they live in social housing, they and their families risk being thrown into homelessness. It is pure folly to think that such measures will improve the social fabric of so-called “broken Britain.”
Gangs
Since the riots the Cameron government has declared war on gangs and gang culture. It is true that a minority of those involved in the rioting were members of criminal gangs, but the majority were not. They were opportunistic thieves.
Suppressing gangsterism in Britain’s poverty ghetto estates is no easy task. Yet every step that has been taken so far has or will strengthen the gangs. Two thirds of those imprisoned as a result of the riots have been incarcerated for the first time in their lives. Evidence is already emerging that many young men in prison are joining gangs for their protection, a practice likely to continue after they leave jail.
On release from jail, nearly all the former prisoners will be unemployed; and if the government fulfils its plans to remove public housing and welfare benefits, many will be destitute. The only source of support for these miserable people will be by way of association with criminal gangs.
Is the Cameron government aware of these rather obvious points? They probably are, but they also know, if they want to win populist recognition for being tough on crime, there is no need to worry about rising crime rates.
And the future?
Apart from strengthening the hand of state repression, what the riots have done is to confirm the process of the Americanisation of the under-class. They become utterly impoverished; its youth violent and totally excluded from society. The “moral majority” demands and justifies ever increasing punishment against them. The idea of a “working class” as a class “for itself” has gone. The political right wins.
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