A Note on the Approach of Marxists to the Police

Some time ago now, there was a short polemic published on the Socialist Party in relation to the police and the state (Marxism and the State: An Exchange). The protagonist of the debate, a by then ex member of the Socialist Party had criticised the Socialist Party for its position in relation to the police, regarding that he believed the police were reactionary through and through and therefore Marxists shouldn't make appeals to them.
As the reply admitted, the police are often used to crush the workers movement and are used by the state as a tool for repression. Thus some people come to a position that the police are 'one reactionary mass'. But this is only one side of the situation. Any institution is made of human material and such peoples opinions, beliefs etc change over time. Of course, the impact of their day to day activities is important, but so is the wider world.
As people may be aware, the 1918-19 British Police Strikes were led by Socialists within the police force - now it may be objected that this was a unusual situation - but the reply in the polemic gives several others - such as Emil Eichorn taking over the Berlin police without arguement and the paralysis of the police during the May 1968 events in France. (Also, the 1917 overthrow of the Tsar was conveyed by a very excited Kharkov police chief, as Trotsky notes in The History of the Russian Revolution, chapter 8)
I'd like to add one more, in his book German Revolution 1917-1923, Pierre Broue points out that "... the Communists stepped up their propaganda work towards non-proletarian layers affected by the crisis, in particular officers and policeman."(pg729)
This was in 1923, during the hyper-inflation crisis, when if anything people were turning towards the nationalists in Germany (the Communists experienced growth too, but at a somewhat slower pace). Why approach the police? Because they aren't seperate from the class contradictions that tear through societies.

Review – Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs

I have to say, that when I recently read this book it was not for the first time, rather this book is one that I hold in great regard and wished to re-read it to clarify in my mind some of the issues that the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster strikes raises.
These strikes which the book covers marked the beginning of an upsurge in union activity in the United States that eventually led to the formation of the industrially based CIO. Moreover it was really the first serious labour dispute that the Communist League of America, part of the International Left Opposition, became involved in. The book depicts these strikes in a very easily readable format whilst pointing out the steps taken, tactics chosen that the union local took and why they were taken. To my mind this is a book that all militant trade unionists should read.
But one thing I want to focus on is the way that the defence of the pickets from police attacks and brutality during the strike was organised. Unlike some on the left who seem to cry for workers to be given arms at any occasion as if the main issue is some desire to beat up the police (or at least this is the impression that can often be given), Dobbs is rather more sane as he explains why the strike committee deemed it necessary to arm pickets against attacks from the police as well as from the employer-organised special deputies.

“Up to now the workers had gone about their activities bare-handed; but they found that attempts to exercise their right to peacefully picket were being repressed with police clubs and blackjacks. They decided to take steps to enforce their democratic right to prevent scabs from grabbing their jobs. It would have been a tactical blunder for members of an isolated vanguard to attempt measures such as the strikers were about to take; they would only get themselves clobbered by the police. In this case, however, the means used in self-defence had their origin in a spontaneous mass mood that had been generated by capitalist repression. Since these means were appropriately limited in the given situation to matching the police club for club, the tactics employed were completely valid.”(pg.81)

Later on in the book he deals with the run-up into the third strike, when workers were making preparations for this and the question was raised again.

“At the first strike committee meeting, chaired by Kelly Postal, the question of ‘picketing equipment’ was put on the agenda. For the first time since the truce at the end of the May strike, the bosses would be trying to operate trucks in defiance of the pickets. The last attempt had been stopped when the pickets won a pitched battle with the cops, fought club against club. At this new juncture many pickets were inclined to start where they left off in May, again arming themselves with clubs. In the changed circumstances, however, this would have been tactically inadvisable. It would have given the cops a pretext for immediate violence against strikers who were trying to peacefully picket; and the union would have lost the tactical advantage of reacting to police violence under defensive slogans.”

And finally he discusses the question again in the aftermath of the police shooting at the strikers and killing two whilst injuring several others.

“In the meantime Local 574’s pickets were reacting to the police assault in full keeping with their magnificent fighting spirit. After the shooting, many who had escaped injury dropped from sight briefly, only to return soon armed with various kinds of weapons. They now had shotguns, deer rifles, revolvers, hunting knives, and various types of souvenirs from World War I, which the veterans among them had brought back from France. Having bested the cops club-against-club in May, the strikers were now prepared to face them gun-against-gun. Although their cause was just and their courage admirable, it would have been a grave tactical mistake to attempt to go through with such an undertaking.
“The situation was now qualitatively different from what it had been during the earlier battle with clubs. Despite the fact that a club can kill, it is not usually classified as a deadly weapon. By virtue of that fact, self-defence of the kind used in May could be sustained tactically for several reasons: it was carried out by a massive body of pickets who had widespread sympathy within the city as a whole; for reasons described previously, Governor Olson found it difficult to use the state militia against the union; and due to the insular nature of the conflict and the local politics involved, President Roosevelt had little inclination and no ready pretext to intervene with federal troops. Consequently the fighting in May remained confined to a showdown between pickets and the local cops.
“As matters stood after Bloody Friday, however, the situation was entirely different. Being so deadly, their use in self-defence against the gun-toting cops could have been twisted around by capitalist propaganda into the appearance of an ‘insurrectionary offensive’ by the strikers. The bosses would have screamed bloody murder, claiming proof of their contention that our aim was not to build a union but to make a revolution. At the first armed skirmish between strikers and police a clamour would have been raised for Olson and Roosevelt to send in troops against the union…
“Local 574, against which such military repression would have been directed, was engaged in an isolated local action. Nationally, our struggle was paralleled only by two other similarly isolated conflicts… Hence, it could not have withstood the heavy military pressure; the strike would have been broken and the union crushed.
“This was a situation in which the central strike leadership had to act swiftly and decisively. Otherwise impulsive pickets, looking for a showdown with the cops, could have done irreparable damage to the union’s cause while the policy question was being debated. The pickets had to be disarmed forthwith, and the central leaders had to do it on their own responsibility…
“…Once again, Local 574’s incomparable soldiers went out barehanded to face cops with riot guns.
“Our action was promptly reported to a meeting of the strike committee, and the reasons were given for the policy we had followed. After considerable debate the committee approved the course taken, issuing picketing orders accordingly. The orders, which were published in The Organizer, contained a deliberately obscure formulation: “All pickets are hitherto instructed to continue tactics of peaceful picketing as hitherto. They are, however, to defend themselves against any attacks.” Since we hadn’t troubled to let the cops know whether or not the pickets were armed, they weren’t sure what permission to ‘defend themselves’ meant and being aware of the strikers’ anger, the cops weren’t in a hurry to find out.”

As these quotes amply demonstrate, at each stage the strike committee measured the objective situation facing the workers and prepared themselves accordingly. The task was not to repeat demands for arming of the workers but to act in a manner that sought to defend the interests of the workers at each stage in response to the course the struggle took. It is a lesson that some ultra-lefts who repeat demands blindly should do well to note.

BNP get police to arrest socialists

From this weeks issue of The Socialist.

On Tuesday 14 July I was arrested, along with two other Socialist Party members, on alleged public order offences following a complaint made by local members of the fascist-led British National Party

Dylan Roberts, Wrexham Socialist Party

The BNP's allegations were entirely without substance, and were a poor attempt at intimidation. The complaint related to campaigning on Saturday 30 May, when we were running a stall in Wrexham town centre.
We were promoting the No2EU-Yes to Democracy European election challenge and campaigning against the BNP. We had spent two hours campaigning prior to the local BNP mob arriving and setting up a stall a few yards away from us.
The BNP outnumbered us, but we did not rise to their deliberate attempts to provoke us. A member of the BNP approached us and made a number of racist comments, while another BNP member filmed us for several hours.

Arrests

One Socialist Party member was arrested at his home on 14 July at around 9am. I went to the police station of my own accord at around midday, where I was arrested. The third Socialist Party member went to the station after finishing work at 5pm, and he was also arrested.
We were detained for up to two hours each. We were asked to provide a statement, and then subsequently to provide fingerprints and DNA, and we were photographed. We also spent time in the 'custody suites'.
North Wales Police (NWP) treated us courteously, and the arresting officer behaved in a very professional manner. Nonetheless, the police had no evidence whatsoever, which leaves the question of why NWP chose to arrest us for what was evidently a fabricated charge.
We were bailed unconditionally, to appear back at Wrexham police station in August. The following morning we were contacted by the arresting officer, who advised us that there would be no further action.
We had to spend a fair amount of time in custody, and our DNA will be retained for 12 years, despite not being charged.
We were told that we had been arrested because NWP had a duty to investigate the complaint, and that the only way in which the police could investigate was to arrest us. It is not acceptable for the police to detain socialists and anti-fascists simply for campaigning against the BNP.

Bangor Socialist Student & Youth Conference

Taken from Socialist Party Wales website - www.socialistpartywales.org.uk

Young Socialists from North Wales received a helping hand from comrades from the South for an all Wales day of action last Saturday in Bangor. The day started with a successful ‘Youth Fight for Jobs’ protest in Bangor.

Report by Sarah Mayo

Workers and students stopped to take our bi-lingual leaflets and sign our petitions and our well travelled ‘YFFJ’ banner attracted a lot of attention (this banner has previously visited Cardiff, Pontypridd and Swansea!)

This was followed by the conference itself, which had sessions on the role of the police, the world economic crisis and a practical session on organising campaigning stalls. Iain Dalton introduced the first session with an emphasis on how the police form a key part of the capitalist state machine and defend private property rather than act in the interests of ordinary people. For example, the police are quick to arrest shop lifters but incredibly slow to respond to domestic burglaries in working class areas. Nevertheless, as workers turn to the police on this issue, it’s important we raise the demand for the democratic control and accountability of the police. There was a far ranging discussion on the socialist analysis of everything from speed cameras, police repression of protesters to domestic violence!


Next, Joe Fathallah gave an excellent and succinct Marxist analysis of the world economic recession and its impact on workers and youth. The economic crisis was inevitable: capitalism is unable to overcome the basic contradiction of ‘boom and bust’ because working class people can’t afford to buy back the goods it produces . The previous long boom could only be sustained by cheap credit and mounting debt for so long. Whilst we are conditional about how long this recession will last, it is clear that workers and young people will be forced to fight back.
The discussion centered on the tasks for socialists, including our socialist programme on the economy, the role of the revolutionary party internationally and the campaign for a new mass workers party here and internationally.

The conference finished with a practical session on running a campaigning stall, with comrades sharing ideas and tips, including how to lay out the stall and how to deal with typical responses to our petitions. This inspiring day finished with an excellent fighting fund collection and a well deserved drink in the pub afterwards.

Police and teachers go on strike in Hunan province

This piece is from chinaworker.org the website of the CWI for China. Interestingly the police strike started from the assistants - i've also heard suggestions that it was the attitude taken by police support staff (UNISON members) towards pay that contributed to the police demo in January this year. Is this a general trend?

Fri, 5 Dec 2008.

First strike action by police officers since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976

On the same day, December 2, in Hunan province, more than 100 police in Laiyang City seized control of the city government building for three hours to demand increased wages, while in Longhui County, over 1,000 teachers took collective strike over unpaid allowances.
According to reports on the internet, at 11am on Tuesday, over 100 police and "contracted police deputies" in Laiyang City, staged protests at the government building. Some of the protesting policemen drove patrol cars onto the square. Most of the protesters were police assistants on temporary "contracts", but their number also included dozens of "formal" police officers. They seized the government building and a violent conflict took place with security guards.
The protesters demanded an increase in basic income for police and police assistants. Currently a "contracted" police assistant in Laiyang only earns 650 yuan per month, and the salary of "formal" police officers is also only two-thirds the level of police in Changsha, the provincial capital. It is believed that this is the first case of large-scale protest by policemen since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

400 million misappropriated

On the same day, in Longhui County (also in Hunan Province), over 1,000 teachers took strike action demanding allowance arrears from the local government. The strike organisers published a public letter, "Message to teachers of the whole county", calling for a sit-in by teachers in the whole county. They termed this a "soft strike", meaning that teachers should not leave the schools. Teachers said that local governments had misappropriated 400 million yuan from teachers' allowances over the past 10 years. This money is sent by central government to top up teachers' meagre earnings.
The striking teachers demand the county government and Board of Education immediately repay these subsidies, of 210 yuan per month, over several months. Since 2002 it was agreed teachers should receive 13 months' wages, but only got 12 months' wages. They demand the government pay these 5 months' wages. According to rules set by central government, the average wages of teachers in compulsory education should not be lower than the average wages of local civil servants. Following the example of this teachers' strike, it was reported that teachers in the neighbouring county of Shaoyang also planned similar protests.
One retired teacher in Shaoyang county told Radio Free Asia, "We appealed many times to the county government and even the provincial government, but they stalled and did not reply to our demands. We have to go on strike, and even sit-strike in front of the provincial government building."China has experienced a wave of teachers strikes recently.
Chinaworker.info has recieved reports of 31 strikes in 8 provinces including, in addition to Hunan, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei. The conditions of teachers are precarious despite promises by China's government to give more money to education.

Socialists on the Criminal Justice System – Leon Trotsky

The second in my series of looks at the writings of socialists. This piece looks at the comments of Trotsky regarding the police that he makes in “Stalin’s Gangsters” a compilation of his articles that were published just before his assassination in Mexico in relation to a previous attempt. I also want to briefly comment upon the passage in What Next? Vital Question for the German Proletariat too.

The most bandied about quotation from Trotsky on the police is the one from What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat which goes “The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker.” This quotation is used by some ultra-left sects to put forward a blanket argument of the complete reactionary nature of all policemen. I don’t think this is necessarily the case as readers of this blog may have noticed, indeed the very sentence before this explains “Consciousness is determined by environment even in this instance”. Rather than saying that the police were wholly a reactionary mass at all times, what Trotsky was actually saying here is that the Prussian police which the SPD technically had control over couldn’t be relied upon as a bulwark against Hitler, indeed concretising that sentence he says “Of late years these policemen have had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects.”

But I am talking about another period, when Trotsky was in Mexico and the GPU was attempting to murder him. Here Trotsky touches upon a different element to the police – that of trying to catch perpetrators of crimes (that is infringements of the law that are reported to them) and take reasonable precautions to prevent crimes from occurring. Discussing this is frankly tricky – mostly because the police’s role as part of the state defending capitalism can often blend in with this so you get arbitrary controls to defend the capitalist state interests portrayed as vital measures to prevent crime (when fairly often they are nothing of the sort). Because the comments are so scattered I will not use quotations as I’m trying to draw the general line of thought in relation to this from a pamphlet that is mainly concerned with a political expose of the methods of Stalinism.

That there could be potential benefits from the police guarding him in Mexico, Trotsky was in no doubt. Otherwise he would have denounced them for doing so in this pamphlet. However, following the points made above, he also supplemented them with his own guard. During the investigation into the attempt on his life he also cooperated with the investigation and court proceedings. Again he supplemented this by collecting material, which as well as supplementing the political points he wished to make in regards, also added to his defence in court. What is the point I am trying to make? Well, in this respect of dealing with crime, a proportion of the actions of the police are socially useful. This is why I defend the idea of democratic control over the police – to give working people the decision on how the resources of the police are to be used.

Indeed whilst I would argue that a socialist society would cut away at the causes of crime, it is a little utopian to expect all crime to diminish and there be no need for investigative procedures to examine facts in relation to something. Expertise in this area would be something we would need to draw out of the police as it exists presently, and perhaps dedicated investigators may be initially necessary. But let us be clear – this would be on a completely different social and organisational basis – it would need to be clearly separated from security and guarding and be thoroughly democratised.

A Brief Look at the Origins and History of Police Unionism in Britain – Pt2

by the way this is sort of a part two to this article http://leftwingcriminologist.blogspot.com/2008/03/brief-look-at-origins-and-history-of.html It takes up where the first one left of with the destruction of the National Union of Police and Prison Officers after the police strikes of 1918-19.

The Police Federation as it was established and still exists today is a vehicle for suppressing police militancy. Constables, who are the lowest rank in the police, were the most militant section of the police both before and during the strike. Thus the new representative structures that the Federation embodied minimised their role. This was done by splitting the structure by rank with constables, sergeants and inspectors each electing their own representatives, where each rank made up a third each of a joint negotiating body. Given that there are many more constables than sergeants, and many more sergeants than inspectors, this was a deliberate weighting to suppress the more militant ranks.
Needless to say, industrial action was banned, as was affiliation or association with outside bodies. Although all policemen were automatically members, the Federation was not allowed to collect funds from them and had to rely on a tiny grant from the Home Office. And after organising a public meeting on proposed pay cuts in 1931 – the Federation was banned from organising these. In the end – worsening conditions as a result of the second world war led to many leaving the force prompting some changes to the Federation.
These changes removed some of the most restrictive elements that had plagued the Federation, but not the substance of what the Federation represented. It was allowed to collect funds, and was able to play some kind of role in pay negotiations, able to dispute pay awards and force the government into arbitration of these. It was still merely a shadow of what NUPPO had been.
It was with this organisation that the police fought their last major battle with the government over pay before now during the 1970’s. It began with the negotiations over pay in 1970, with something as minor as writing letters to MP’s but motions that would have granted the federation the powers of a union, including industrial action were debated at the Federation’s conference.
However, the situation changed with the election of a Conservative government who increased the award offered to the police (although not for almost a year!), as a part of preparations for attempting to break the unions. On the other hand, Labour had been constrained by the need to appear fair across all pay increases (similarly to today) so as not to anger workers in TUC affiliated unions.
This was again the case in 1975 in the first pay negotiations after the return of Labour to government. The government was again imposing pay restraint as was determined not to make the police a ‘special case’, however, a rising tide of industrial militancy saw cracks appearing elsewhere. Thus 1977 Federation conference saw as delegates voting for the right to strike as a result of continuingly worsening pay deals. However, at the same time they also rejected TUC affiliation. In the end the promise of a pay review, which when implemented by the Tories gave a guaranteed increases in line with inflation, led to talk about the need for union powers being dropped.

Harassing Young People

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has recently been heralding an initiative in Essex where officers harass ‘yobs’ by following young people around with video cameras. The Guardian recently published an article (30/05/08) written by one of their journalists who had spent a day with the ‘Operation Leopard’ police taskforce.
The journalist describes how the police roam the estate looking for a ‘hit list of individuals’, filming them and anyone they are with and occasionally visiting their homes. Apparently those filmed have the right not to be, but as with many ‘right’ that we don’t have when it suits the authorities, the journalist notes that this option wasn’t given to any of the 15 people filmed in his presence.
But one of the many problems of such ‘targeted’ police work is that it targets either stereotypically contrived sections of the population, or ‘known offenders’, the latter given only a tiny proportion of all crimes committed are ever arrested isn’t the ‘evidence-based’ approach its advocates make it out to be. But also, as a conversation the journalist has with a 19 year old target uncovers, just because someone has committed one or more crimes in the past, doesn’t mean they will do so in the future, indeed many people who have engaged in criminal or anti-social behaviour when they are young simply drop out of it later or ‘grow up’ as the 19 year old expresses it.
Many working class people rightly feel threatened by ‘street’ crime and anti-social behaviour, so it is perhaps understandable that many residents on the police’s survey supported the initiative believing the inconvenience of a dozen or so youths is worth it if crime is reduced. There are two problems with this though, firstly that saturation and intimidatory police tactics can often provoke a fierce backlash from the relatively powerless groups subjected to them. Secondly, there aren’t enough police officers to operate such schemes everywhere, and given that it doesn’t remove the underlying causes of such actions, as many residents themselves expressed, once the operation leaves the estate crime and anti-social behaviour will probably increase again.
Socialists do support the use of policing to tackle crime, but only under local democratic control and we would favour a more reactive use rather than proactively harassing people, who often are completely innocent. But this would be as an auxiliary to tackling the problems at the root of crime, unemployment and alienation which give many young people no future under this current capitalist system.

A Brief Look at the Origins and History of Police Unionism in Britain – Pt1

This is part one of this post - partially becuase I haven't done the other half yet which will cover the period after the 1918-19 police strikes, but also becuase they are two fundamentally different periods in police unionism history. I also would like to do a piece or two on prison officer union, probation officer unions and also court staff as i think these are areas of interest

The formation of unions for police officers came as a result of dissatisfaction over pay and conditions prior to the First World War, although the first recorded instance of collective action dates back to 1872. Most grievances either related to conditions of service (in particular ruthless military discipline practiced within the force) as well as pay disparity between different regions. This led to the formation in 1913 of the Metropolitan Police Union, which soon expanded to have a branch for provincial members and in 1914 became The National Union of Police and Prison Officers (NUPPO).
It is worthwhile noting that the State has always been especially opposed to granting those working for the State the same trade union rights as other workers. NUPPO was no exception. As Rob Reiner notes in The Blue-Coated Worker, “Membership was secret and the Union met in a clandestine way. This was necessitated by the Union’s illegal status… Policemen discovered to be members were suspended.” (pg 20.)
NUPPO began forging links with the labour movement, whom its leaders were sympathetic to. This of course was made more complicated by the role of the police in repressing strikes, but the union became affiliated to the Labour Party, the TUC and many local trades councils.
The deteriorating position of police incomes during the First World War meant that they had gone from being relative to that of a skilled worker to just below that of an unskilled worker. This led to an increase in membership of the union, and importantly leadership of the union passing from ex-police officers to an executive of current police officers, several of whom were committed socialists.
In 1918, an event occurred that led to Sylvia Pankhurst describing it as “The Spirit of Petrograd”. This was the police strike in the late summer. The immediate stimulus for the strike was the dismissal of Constable Theil, a leading member of the union on August 27th 1918. This led to the union resubmitting its previous demands for recognition and a pay increase, as well as now demanding Thiel’s re-instatement, with an ultimatum that the union would strike if these conditions were not met. The deadline was ignored and the strike started on midnight August 29th and was almost total, by the August 31st approximately 12000 Metropolitan police officers were on strike. The government of Lloyd George was quickly forced to concede to the unions demands on pay, conditions and the re-instatement of Thiel. However, the question of union recognition was not completely answered by Lloyd George saying that he could not recognise a union in wartime.
Although not fully recognised, the concessions led to an ease of repression against union activists and also a massive expansion of the union itself. Moreover, both in recognition with it’s loyalty to the workers movement and realising its own strength the union publicly declared that its members would stop repressing workers, and not be used for strike-breaking. The union in London also fought for democratic control of the police force rather than the despotic control of the Home Office appointed Commissioner, General Macready.
A battle emerged over the newly created elected representative board which was to negotiate wages and conditions with Macready. The union made all the officers on the board ex-officio members of its executive and dominated it. It used this board to extend its control over police deployment and refused to pass on orders against the interests of police officers and workers alike.
However, on 24th February 1919, after the board refused to accept one of Macready’s orders he moved against the union and drew up plans for elected three different boards each representing a different ranks of the police force, constables, sergeants and inspectors individually. Union activists were dismissed and the Home Secretary in support of Macready that any policemen who retained membership of the Union would lose their jobs, and on 8th July 1919 starting bring forth a bill to ban police from being members of a trade union. Crucially, however, the government combined repression with concessions that vastly increased pay and used the new three-tier representative structure to establish the Police Federation, a kind of company union that still exists today.
The union had already balloted on strike action over recognition, improvements in pay and the reinstatement of a union activist, getting 44,599 in favour with only 4324 against. However, they blundered when they called off action after reports of Macready bringing in the military to strike-break against them. In fact the government had been planning against them ever since making the concessions the previous year. The union tried to lean on the rest of the labour movement for support, however, a combination of opposition to a strike from the tops of the movement as well as the difficulties of convincing workers who had previously had the police used against to come out in support of the police, meant that the supportive action that took place quickly dissolved away. Most of the police did not come out, when the last ditch strike action took place as the bill prohibiting union membership was read out in parliament. Indeed, only in Liverpool was the strike a success with over half the membership coming out, but it was eventually suppressed, with all strikers dismissed from the force.

Review – The State of the Police, Phil Scraton (1985)

This book, comes from the ‘left idealist’ school of critical criminology. (The term left idealist isn’t of their own choosing, but one Jock Young applied to them and which I use for the purpose of differentiation). This approach, around Joe Sim, Phil Scraton, Paul Gilroy and others, argued quite fervently against the realist turn taken by the left realists of Jock Young, Richard Kinsey and John Lea. The book in fact is to an extent a reply to John Lea and Jock Young’s ‘What Is To Be Done About: Law and Order?’
I find parts of the book quite good. Indeed Scraton gives a good history of the police, in particular signling out where they have been used against the struggles of the working class and also attempting to show how (in)effective attempts to subject the police to democratic control had been, particularly in Merseyside and London. He also comments on the use of the police during the 1984-5 Miner’s Strike and the lack of accountability here too.
However, missing from this history, is the struggles of the police themselves. Indeed, the 1918 police strike gets a couple of lines mention in passing. The book as a whole tends to treat police officers as one reactionary mass, which is a dangerous and inaccurate way of looking at the police force.
The other problem that I have with this book is it’s conclusion. After discussing attempts to institute democratic control, it also attempts a critique of the left realist position towards this which doesn’t really go very far at all. However, the ‘left idealists’ then go quite far in the opposite direction, and reject democratic accountability (as being unobtainable rather then unwanted) and instead argue for monitoring of the police as the only form of accountability possible (such groups as Inquest stem from their work). To me, although Inquest and other groups have produced interesting information, pulling back from the struggle to actually do anything to improve the lives of working people is a cardinal sin. Moreover, although the book is as I have mentioned in some respects very informative, it is based on an incorrect perception of the police and thus draws incorrect conclusions.

Utopia or Reality? Can we create the Perfect Criminal Justice System?

This was an essay I had to submit for my course on the criminal justice system, I post it here because it raises several things I discussed in my post Draft Prinicples of a Marxist Criminology and should be of interest to all readers ps. there's more after the references

Is there such a thing as a perfect criminal justice system and, moreover, what would such a criminal justice system look like? In this essay we will examine these questions. We shall first discuss what a criminal justice system is, before contemplating what the aim and purpose of a criminal justice system is. We will then discuss if and how these systems may be perfected, before discussing the implications of this on individual branches of the criminal justice system and concluding the essay.
The first question that we are presented with is that of definition, what is a criminal justice system? The Sage Dictionary of Criminology (2001:66) defines Criminal Justice as “The process through which the state responds to behaviour that it deems unacceptable. Criminal justice is delivered through a series of stages: charge, prosecution, trial; sentence; appeal; punishment. These processes and the agencies which carry them out are referred to collectively as the criminal justice system”. Cavadino & Dignan (2002:1) note that the criminal justice system consist of the “police, prosecution authorities and courts” in addition to the penal system “the system that exists to punish and otherwise deal with people that have (usually) been convicted of a criminal offence” (most importantly the prison and probation services).
The entry in the Sage Dictionary of Criminology later states “… crime control, or crime reduction, is obviously the overall aim of criminal justice…” (2001:67). But this answer does not yet solve our question; instead we must ask what would the aim and purpose be of a perfect criminal justice system? Given as we have seen crime control and crime reduction are the aims of a criminal justice system, then a perfect criminal justice system would reduce crime to non-existence. However, such an aim is quite contradictory; if such an aim was achieved there would be no need for a criminal justice system to exist any more as there would be no further criminal offending. Here we have our answer, the perfect criminal justice exists when it has served its purpose, when it is no longer necessary and thus no longer exists.
If we consider Lenin’s (1987) notion with regards to the state as a whole withering away when it is of no further use, then the idea of a criminal justice system ceasing to exist when crime is no longer occurring is very similar. In discussing democracy in the state Lenin (1987:339) says “… the more complete it is the more quickly it will become unnecessary…”, we could similarly say the more complete and effective a criminal justice system is in reducing crime (by lowering recidivism for example), the less need there is for it.
One may ask how relevant it is to be talking about the state in relation to the criminal justice system. As Taaffe et al. (1983:25-6) point out that “In the last analysis – as Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out - the state consists of armed bodies of men and their material appendages ie. prisons etc.” Are not these the main constituents of the criminal justice system – the police and prisons – alongside the judiciary?
It would also be wrong to consider Lenin’s argument on the withering away of the state without noting that there is another criminological tendency which posits the lack of or severe reduction of a criminal justice system. Abolitionism to some would seem a not too dissimilar approach to the one just outlined above. Indeed, in an article outlining the relationship of abolitionism to crime control, Willem de Haan talks of “popular or socialist forms of penality” (de Haan, 1991:214), and the abolition “of the repressive capitalist system part by part or step by step” (de Haan, 1991:213).
However, abolitionism, according to de Haan, (1991:203) “is based on the moral conviction that social life should not and, in fact, cannot be regulated effectively by criminal law and that, therefore, the role of the criminal justice system should be drastically reduced while other ways of dealing with problematic situations, behaviours and events are being developed and put into practice.” Unlike the Marxism of Lenin, its starting point is not class struggle that necessitates the abolition of capitalist relations of production, but moral conviction instead. Whereas the eventual ‘withering away’ of the state and criminal justice system is only possible in a post-capitalist situation for Lenin, Abolitionists want the criminal justice system gone without any pre-conditions.
This difference then leads on to differences of a more practical nature. As de Haan (1991:207) goes on to state “…the criminal justice system is part of the crime problem rather than its solution… Therefore there is no point in trying to make the criminal justice system more effective or more just.” And later “Instead of the panacea which the criminal justice system pretends to provide for problems of crime control, abolitionism seeks to remedy social problems… Abolitionism assumes that social problems or conflicts are unavoidable as they are inherent to social life…” (de Haan, 1991:211) In contrast, as Taaffe et al. (1983:14) point out “It would be absurd for socialists in present day society to stand aside and declare that we cannot support the police in taking action to prevent crime and arrest criminals.” However, Marxists would agree that social problems need remedying too, and it is to this that we now turn.
As Jock Young (1981) discusses, aetiology, or the causes of crime is a pivotal issue in criminology and in how one deals with crime. This is influential, because as he exposes “If, for instance, we view crime as a voluntary act of the individual, we would tend towards a policy of punishing him or her, whereas, if she/he is seen as acting under the compulsion of individual or social forces, the treatment of the criminal might seem to be inappropriate.” (Young, 1981:252)
Indeed, Lenin (1987:340) suggests that with the removal of “the fundamental social cause of excesses”, which he holds to be “the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty”, “excesses will inevitably begin to “wither away”… with their withering away, the state (or in our case the criminal justice system) will also wither away”.
From this passage we can see that Lenin suggests two main causes of crime (or excesses); ‘want and poverty’ (deprivation/relative deprivation) as well as ‘exploitation of the masses’ (alienation). These factors are not new, indeed, Lenin being a Marxist drew these concepts from Marx, who exposed them several times in his works, most accessibly in Wage, Labour and Capital (Marx, 1996).
Marx’s theory of alienation can be summed up nicely in the sentences “… the exercise of labour power, labour is the worker’s own life activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as a part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life.” (Marx, 1996:25) Sell (2006:28) adds to this by commenting “Instead of making life easier, the increase in automation has reduced ever more jobs to mind-numbing repetition and boredom”.
Marx’s explanation of relative deprivation is similarly summed up well by his words “A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.” (Marx, 1996:39) He concludes, “Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx, 1996:39)
But how does this relate to crime? Sell (2006:30) argues that “The result [of increases in alienation and relative deprivation] has been an increase in street crime and robbery, almost all of it carried out against people who are also living in poverty. There is an increase in drug addiction… The reasons for drug use are wide and varied. Nonetheless, the increase in drug addiction and dependency, both legal and illegal, is primarily the result of a more alienated society.”
She goes on to illustrate this, pointing out “…the experience of the ex-mining villages around the country… the closure of the pits have left previously strong communities suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty and drug addiction.” (Sell, 2006:30)
Young (1991:154) correctly states that based on this “To reduce crime we must reduce relative deprivation by ensuring meaningful work is provided at fair wages, by providing decent housing in which people are proud to live in, by ensuring that leisure facilities are available on a universal basis…”
However, as Taylor (1981:79) recognises “A welfare state which works on the principle that woman is naturally dependent on man and also currently depends on the expulsion of large numbers of youths into worklessness is not meeting the real needs of women and young people to be self-generating members of the human species.” The problem being that attempting to solve the problem of relative deprivation via a redistributive welfare state doesn’t solve the problem of alienation. It, as Taylor (1981) later notes adds because this is carried out by a layer of professionals which he argues act in lieu of people, rather than under their control.
Engels (1971:32) similarly discusses how “Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head is the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society.”
To overcome alienation, it is necessary to overcome the fact that most people have no control over a large portion of their life, whether in the workplace, or outside it. Taylor (1981:101) argues that a “thoroughgoing democratisation” is necessary for these interests to be met. What would this look like you may ask?
Engels (1971:33) commenting on the Paris Commune suggests that “In the first place it filled all posts – administrative, judicial and educational – by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers… In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up…”
As Johnstone (2000) points out there are critics who would suggest that such a manner of operation of society as a whole, and the criminal justice system in particular, could not operate. Johnstone (2000:165) goes on to explain “even if it were concluded that today there is widespread and increasing support for a less tolerant and more punitive penal policy, it would not follow that increased public participation in the making of penal policy would automatically result in a harsher penal system.”
He continues “With regard to penal policy, the suggestion that people should be excluded from its making because they do not have the necessary qualities – such as knowledge, active interest and restraint – is easily countered. Through participation in making penal policy, people will develop these qualities. To the extent that they lack such qualities, this is due precisely to the over-centralization and over-professionalization of governance in general and penal policy making in particular. As decisions about the use of the social power to punish are historically removed from ordinary people and placed in the hands of a small elite, people lose the attributes required to make those decisions well. The only way they can recover these qualities is by having these decisions returned to them.” (Johnstone, 2000:158)
And tying this back in with the ideas developed so far, Lenin (1987:339) comments “…the diffusion of democracy among such an overwhelming majority of the population [means] that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear”, by special machine Lenin means the state (or for our purposes the criminal justice system). Of course such a thing will not happen overnight, as Lenin (1987:334) notes “there can be no question of defining the exact moment of the future withering away – the more so since it must obviously be a rather lengthy process”. Greater and greater participation can only come with time being freed from other areas; in particular the working day must be gradually shortened to allow for “removing the antithesis between mental and physical labor” (Lenin, 1987:344). Additionally, other institutions outside the criminal justice system would also be used to help in this process, most notably the media and the education system would be inherently useful to help people become more informed about crime and the criminal justice system.
As mentioned above, informed journalism could play a role in this. Wacquant (2007:39) gives us an example of how this may look “A rational public debate on crime would differentiate between offences and rigorously measure their incidence and effects. It would eschew the short-term perspective and emotional cast of daily journalism to make a clear cut differentiation between blips and groundswells, incidental variations from year-to-year and long-term trends. It would not confuse the rising fear of crime, intolerance of crime, or concern over crime with an increase in law-breaking itself.”
However, as Feilzer & Young (2006) demonstrate, such journalism cannot be limited to just one columnist in one newspaper. It must become a standard for newspapers and other media to place crimes in their social context, and to be written in a manner that explains the processes behind the topic being reported on. A basic grasp of the workings of the criminal justice system taught to all school pupils would also assist in this manner.
Now that we have a brief outline of what is necessary to achieve such a state of the criminal justice system, it is perhaps worth looking at what the first steps towards this may be in each of it’s branches. Although the comments here are focussed on the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, the general thrust should be applicable to a greater or lesser extent in other countries too.
Policing is perhaps the most visible part of the criminal justice system. For our purposes it is perhaps useful to look in particular at the disputes in the early 1980’s to do with the accountability of the police. This centred around several issues, from the 1980 Police Authorities (Powers) Bill proposed by Jack Straw MP, the inner city riots of 1980 and 1981 (particularly in Toxteth and Brixton) and conflicts over the role of police authorities, and later the deployment of the police during the 1984-5 miner’s strike (Scraton, 1985).
The link between all these issues was the attempt to subordinate the priorities of local policing to the wishes of the local populace. Kinsey et al. (1986) argue that police are dependent upon the local community for information to help them apprehend offenders and that the pursuance of policy contrary to the wishes of the community (such as operations like Swamp 81 which provoked the 1981 Brixton riots) merely serve to alienate the community further from the police, and thus reducing this flow of information. As they note “People have little incentive to participate in a process over which they have little control” (Kinsey et al., 1986:133) Instead they advocate increasing the powers of police authorities and giving them the responsibility to encourage debate over crime and conducting local crime surveys. This could however be extend to even more local democratic bodies for certain areas or long lasting cases or series of crimes.
Prisons have been said to have been in an almost perpetual state of crisis recently (Cavadino & Dignan, 2003), the most important of which is crisis of resources. This has manifested itself recently with a record prison populations leading to massive overcrowding across the 139 prisons in England and Wales (Dalton, 2007a).
Overcrowding has led to a poor standard of accommodation, which Cavadino and Dignan (2002:189) suggest is ‘a byword for squalor’ with lack of access to adequate toilet facilities, lack of time outside cells and cell sharing. Similary a record 91 self-inflicted deaths in prison was recorded in 1999 (Cullen and Minchin, 2000) and Morgan (2002) notes that about a quarter of all prisons are Victorian buildings, most of these older prisons are local prisons which suffer the most overcrowding. As Dalton (2007b) notes at present the strategy is to release some prisoners early and attempt to build the way out of the problem, creating 9,500 extra places by 2014, but estimates suggest that cells will run out then too.
Fundamentally, a change in policy is necessary here. Cavadino & Dignan (2002) suggest that the judiciary is the ‘crux of the [penal] crisis’ and suggest a list of reforms including empowering bodies to create enforceable guidelines for sentencing to make it more consistent, in addition to other measures to encourage the judiciary to be more lenient. However, why leave the same people running the system if they have been too punitive, and why stick to sentences given out by them if they too are too punitive. As Dalton (2007b) argues, the judiciary should be elected and democratically elected tribunals should review existing sentences.
Overcrowded prisons also don’t help reduce crime either. As government figures show six out of every ten released from prison end up back inside within two years, this cannot be improved by a situation which has seen prisoners being locked up for longer in their cells, rather than tackling some prisoner’s underlying problems such as illiteracy or innumeracy. As Dalton (2007b) points out, a reduction in the prison population would free up resources which could be used towards the rehabilitation of those it is still deemed necessary to detain.
In conclusion, the perfect criminal justice system is both possible and impossible in that on reaching its stated aim it will have fulfilled its purpose and fall into disuse. In the opinion of the author of these words most other approaches tend to keep crime down to manageable levels rather than rid us of it. This solves no-ones problems; people still get victimised, offenders get stigmatised for life and the public foots the millions and billions necessary to make the system work.
This essay has thus taken a distinctly Marxist position, drawing in particular on Lenin’s notion of the withering away of the state. We have discussed what this position would put forward as the reasons for crime and how this influences how the criminal justice system should operate to help alleviate these problems. We have then discussed how to implement these ideas within several branches of the criminal justice system. From this we have shown that perfecting the criminal justice system to the point where it is no longer needed, will take a long time and will generally consist of increasing democratisation. Wider changes in society will also be needed to supplement these processes. Crime breeds inequality, so it seems only apt that achieving real equality is the solution to this problem.

References

Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2002) The Penal System, 3rd ed. London: SAGE
Cullen, C. & Minchin, M. (2000) The Prison Population in 1999, Home Office Research Findings No. 118, London: Home Office
de Haan, W. (1991) ‘Abolitionism and Crime Control: A Contradiction in Terms’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE
Dalton, I. (2007a) ‘Reid’s prison disaster’, The Socialist, 1st-7th February pg.5
Dalton, I. (2007b) ‘Overcrowded prisons, overworked staff’, The Socialist, 13th-19th September pg.4
Engels, F. (1971) ‘Introduction to the Civil War in France’ In: Marx, K. & Engels, F. On the Paris Commune, Moscow: Progress Publishers
Feilzer, M. & Young, R. (2006) ‘Crime Scene Oxford’: The impact of a factual newspaper column on readers of a local newspaper – Final Report to the Nuffield Foundation, Oxford: Centre for Criminology
Johnstone, G. (2000) ‘Penal Policy Making: Elitist, Populist or Participatory?’, Punishment & Society, 2(2): pp.161-180
Kinsey, R., Lea, J. & Young, J. (1986) Losing the Fight Against Crime, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Lea, J. & Young, J. (1996) ‘Relative Deprivation’ In: Muncie, J., McLaughlin, E. & Langan, M. eds. Criminological Perspectives: A Readers, London: SAGE
Lenin, V. I. (1987) ‘The State and Revolution’, In: Christman, H. M. eds. Essential Works of Lenin: “What is to be done?” and Other Writings, Mineola: Dover
Marx, K. (1996) ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ In: Marx, K. Wage Labour and Capital & Wages, Price and Profit, London: Bookmarks
McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. eds. (2001) The Sage Dictionary of Criminology, London: SAGE
Morgan, R. (2002) ‘Imprisonment’ In: Maguire, M., Morgan, R. & Reiner, R.. Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP
Scraton, P. (1985) The State of the Police, London: Pluto Press
Sell, H. (2006) Socialism in the 21st Century, 2nd ed. London: Socialist Publications
Taaffe, P., Grant, E. & Walsh, L. (1983) The State… A Warning to the Labour Movement, London: Militant
Taylor, I. (1981) Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism, London: Macmillan
Wacquant, L. (2007) ‘How to Escape the Law and Order Trap’, Criminal Justice Matters, 70 pp.39-40
Young, J. (1981) ‘Thinking seriously about crime: some models of criminology’ In: Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. & Pawson, J. eds. Crime & Society: Readings in History and Theory, London: Routledge
Young, J. (1991) ‘Left Realism and the Priorities of Crime Control’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE

Upcoming Posts

As you have seen i've posted on some of the things touched on in this post before (ie left realist criminology, media and crime, and crime and alienation) expect over the next few weeks/months/whenever i get around to it:-

A review of the State of the Police with some commentary on the 'left idealist' branch of critical criminology
A post on relative deprivation as a 'cause' of crime
A post on the criminal justice system and the paris commune
A post on The State and Revolution and the criminal justice system
A review of The State: A warning to the Labour Movement
A post on political economy and crime
A review(s) of Cavadino & Dignan's arguements about the penal system

Police ballot for industrial rights

Article from the Socialist 515

GORDON BROWN is trying to enforce below-inflation pay rises on public-sector workers, from the civil service to local government workers, teachers and nurses. Now the police are being forced into considering action. The Police Federation, representing rank and file police officers, has called on the Home Secretary to resign and is at loggerheads with the Metropolitan Police over a protest demonstration on 23 January.

Iain Dalton
The police were awarded a 2.5% pay rise by an independent tribunal from 1 September. But the government decided to implement it for the 140,000 police in England and Wales only from 1 December, saving £30 million.

Since the 1970s the police have been awarded pay increases by an index, which takes into account their lack of a right to strike. This year however, as part of their drive against public-sector pay increases, the government decided they wished to come out of this and impose a settlement.

The index was given to the police after discontent in the police force in the 1970s. A series of pay disputes, no doubt influenced by working-class struggles at the time, led to calls then for genuine trade union organisation and the right to strike.

To silence their demands they were given an immediate 10% pay increase, with a review into police pay after this. When the Tory government was returned in 1979, it announced the new generous pay index, no doubt partly to buy the support of police officers for the assault on trade unions during the 1980s.

Now the Police Federation is to ballot its members on whether it should lobby for full industrial rights. The Federation is also attempting to organise a demonstration in London, although archaic legislation may be used to block this from taking place - which would leave us with the odd sight of the Metropolitan Police banning police from demonstrating.

Socialists support police officers' right to a proper trade union and the right to strike. We should work towards bringing the ranks of the police closer to the labour movement, whilst also calling for local democratic control of the police and opposing their repressive use.

PS - I was wondering about whether anyone else would be interested in setting up a joint blog about the left & crime?

Rejecting the ‘All Police Officers Are Reactionary’ Theory

I think there is a tendency amongst those on the left to view the police and other bodies of the state as one reactionary mass. This however is a crude point of view. It neither takes into account the different strata in these organisations nor explains in any way why they are or become one reactionary mass.

It is impossible to deny that the police organised as they are at present are no real friends of the workers and socialist movements. There are countless documentations of police brutality towards working class people, protesters and strikers. Such behaviour is reactionary there is no doubt, but just because a group carries out reactionary behaviour does not mean they are reactionary through and through. Nor does it mean that all members of such a group are reactionary. Such broad generalisations are not the method of Marxists, rather they are those of the like of the capitalist media whose broad brush will take incidents and whip them up into moral panics. (Such as associating all blacks with ‘mugging’ etc.)

One of the main suggestions of why the police act thus is said to be due to their ‘canteen culture’. This idea suggests that those who join the police are integrated through their fellow officers into a pre-existing police subculture which is racist, anti-working class etc. Whilst I do not doubt that being around a group that consistently holds these attitudes will no doubt have an impact upon a person, with either some of these ideas being accepted or repulsed, I would hold that the activities police officers play a large role in shaping this too. If most of your interactions with a group of people are arresting them for vandalism or another crime, then that will impact on how you view that group (this could be an ethnic group or people from a particular area for example). The question I would put to this idea though is when is someone integrated into this subculture? Obviously such a process would take time before it embedded itself into the officers consciousness, how long would that be?

Another suggestion, that would answer the previous question too, is that those who join the police have an authoritarian personality. Such a personality pre-disposes them to want to be able to control others and hold racist and supremacist viewpoints. It is contended that the selection process favours these types of people, and naturally they fit perfectly into the canteen culture and do not really need integrating. However, we are left again with the question of where does this authoritarian personality come from? Are people born with it or what? I actually think this idea is fairly stupid, as I’ve pointed out in reality it doesn’t really explain anything as we don’t know why they hold these views, plus having met people who were joining the police at the end of my previous course I feel I’m in a good position to say that they certainly didn’t have authoritarian personalities. Which is not to say that racists etc. don’t join the police, just that all who join the police aren’t racists.

A Marxist analysis of the police would first point to the position of the police in capitalist society. The police are one of the ‘armed bodies of men’ that make up the coercive apparatus of capitalist society. Like all of the ‘armed bodies of men’, they are in the most part recruited from amongst the working class, thus one could assume that they would at time of recruitment have a similar outlook to other working class people.

The tops of state agencies however, are not composed similarly. They are drawn from the ruling layers of society, or those lower layers who have come to see life their way, in the case of senior appointments, this is done by the Home Secretary. It is those in the upper echelons who decide how and where the police are deployed, what their priorities are, control information within the force etc. Going back to our original question of what makes the police engage in the behaviours already described, although an individual officer has some degree of choice over what they do, they are put in a given situation by their superiors, they are briefed about a situation by their superiors, their objectives are assigned by their superiors and so forth.

I am not attempting to justify such behaviour, rather I am attempting to explain in general why such actions occur. I would suggest it is similar to troops carrying out atrocities in wars.

Is there anything we can do about this? I would suggest there is. In the UK at present the police are in dispute with the government over pay. There is discussion about having the right to trade unions and strike action. This is reminiscent of the 1970’s where the police were in dispute over pay again. Their consciousness touched by the other disputes of those time, they strove for trade union rights. Whilst opposing the repressive use of force, Marxists should support these demands and work to bring rank and file police into the orbit of the labour movement. In revolutionary upswings the police have refused to repress the working class (ie. France 1968) or have even gone on strike (Britain 1919), it is towards this and the ‘suspension in mid-air’ of the capitalist states coercive apparatus Marxists should work towards.

Review - In The Name of the Working Class by Sandor Kopacsi

In The Name of the Working Class is an autobiography/description of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, written by the at that time Chief of Budapests Police.

The book begins with Kopacsis description of his upbringing, his origins as a metal worker and his involvement in the resistance against German occupation during the second world war.

He then describes his move to Budapest to become a police officer and how he rose through the ranks to become police cheif, but including description of the general political situation and the influence of the Russians and his disdain for the AVO (the Hungarian secret police).

One of the most interesting parts of the book is his depiction of his involvement in the 1956 revolution and how his somewhat blind faith in the Russians was broken in the course of events. He then goes onto desribe his imprisonment and the sham trials to convict him and the other leaders of the rebellious government. (Many other people were simply executed or fled to Austria). Kopacsi once released from prison eventually emigrated to Canada where he died.

The book is not a full depiction of the event, but it does give huge insights into it, especially where Kopacsi was involved. This is not so say he didn't make mistakes during the course of the revolution, I for one thought he didn't put enough faith in the working masses, however, given the dominance of Stalinism it is somewhat understandable. Of particular interest is when Kopacsi details the revolt of sections of the Hungarian Army and how he dealt with his own role as chief of police.

The major criticism I would make of this book is the introduction, I believe it is in desperate need of reprinting with a different one that seeks to put the event fully in its context rather than be loaded with capitalist triumphalism, it isn't the worst I've ever seen, but to me it seemed to misrepresent what Kopacsi says and the lessons of this event.

Ps. This book is fairly cheap second hand on amazon.co.uk and despite its heavy topic made fairly good light reading

Review - Losing the Fight Against Crime by Richard Kinsey, John Lea & Jock Young (1986)

This book was written based on the results of several local victimisation studies into crime on Merseyside, combining this with other research the authors had been involved with and in the area of policing. The book firstly begins by reviewing some facts and figures from the first six/seven years of Margaret Thatchers administration, notably that since 1979 crime was 40% by 1986 with a polcie force costing £58 per person rising to £117 per person in London. But even with a better paid, better equiped and bigger police force, the clear-up rate of crime had gone down from 41% in 1979 to 35% in 1984 and even more damning for every 100 unsolved crimes in 1979 there were almost double in 1984.

The book goes on then to argue that there has been a crisis in policing where the public began to distrust the police due to the tactics that were being employed ie mass stop and search operations that kicked off the Brixton riots, but also the mass mobilisation of the police during the miner's strike of 1984-5. They then go on to present one of their main ideas in the work, that the police are largely dependant on the support of the public for combating crime. The tactics have outlined above have increased distrust, because as the authors note the best indicator of whether the police will stop and search you is if you have been a victim of crime yourself. This leads to the police receiving less information about crime and thus reducing the clear-up rate.

The book then goes on to discuss the levels of violence in society and that official crime stats or victim stats are unlikely to reflect this an only really the homicide rate is the best stable measure of violent crime (more recently hospital records have also been used).

They also argue against the idea that crime is wholly socially determined but also against the ideas that one needs to be tough on crime, which they then go on to put forward the Neighbourhood Crime Scheme in Detroit as a way in which to reduce crime rates arguing that democratisation of the police is necessary by local government having control of police appointments and a truly independent complaints body. They also set up over 3,500 schemes, mostly organised through existing residents and tennants bodies into bodies that set local policing priorities, rather than just talking shops.

The book then discusses the problems the police experience when they try to collect information themselves through co-operation with other public agencies and by massive databases, stop and search and wiretaps which in the most case turn out to be rather expensive for very little gain (very little information is collected and people who would have talked to you to provide info otherwise won't anymore).

This leads them on to suggest their solution which has many elements of the aforementioned Chicago scheme. They argue that police policy should be controlled by local government sub-committees consisting of elected councillors and some co-opted police representatives. This group would also have responsibility for encouraging real debate on crime based on the real information (and not hyped tabloid craze) as well as conducting local crime surveys.

They argue that such a system would have a maximum voluntary reporting by the public and would use the minimum amount of coercion, and would fully respect civil rights which would again make the police more efficient in their work.


Critique


My main problem with this book comes from the authors lack of understaning of class and the state. They reject the idea that crime will only wither away under socialism, suggesting that neglects the fact that some reforms can be won in capitalism that can make workers lives better, but these reforms are snatched back by the ruling class at the first opportunity they get, note the increased use of stop and search in the UK after the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 attacks. They also reject the idea fo the state being organised to repress workers struggles, but they fail to understand that it is this only in the last analysis, so whilst not every action is directed against workers, when the stakes are high (such as the miners strike) they will be used to their full.
Their notion of class seems to be only in the relevance of the class origins of someone, rather than in the Marxist view of the conditions people live under. For Marxists it is conditions workers exist in which make them the most revolutionary class due to appaling working conditions but also the fact they have to work more as group or unit that any other class, which leads them to take group or collective action. These errors permeate the work unfortunately.
Their idea of a solution is also sadly lacking. They correctly argue to democratising the police as an urgent step forward, but they do not mean the same democratising as Marxists would mean. For myself it would be the right of the police to a trade union that was lost after the 1919 police strike (see http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liverpool/l2). I would argue that a police force ought to be organised with the election of officers subject to the right of recall on the same wages as the rest of the police officers (with the police only receiving the wage of an average worker). The police should be controlled by a democratically elected local committee, with local elected representative, elected trade union representatives as well as elected police representatives. I would also include elected representatives of the judiciary in a small number, but subject to the judiciary itself being elected.
Such a body would be responsible for policing priorities and the other tasks suggested by the authors. But I would also demand the democratisation of the press to allow full discussion of crime, as the current capitalist papers constantly distort crime reporting (see The New Politics of Crime & Punishment by Roger Matthews and Jock Young, where Young discusses the headlines produced by all newspapers in response to recently published crime figures where they said crime had increased when in fact it had decreased).
As mentioned above, these demands must be coupled with the demand for a socialist society, with production planned to meet the needs of people under democratic control.