A small Twitter storm has been brewing today about the potential for demonstrations by the police against job cuts, and whether the left anti-cuts movement should join in.
There seems to be some confusion going on, and some outright naivety. Any number of people can refer to police strikes of 1918-19 (interesting article by Owen Jones), or state that revolutionaries need to win over cops (probably true). But this is not a revolutionary situation, or even close. It’s not a case of police beginning to join in with a serious class struggle, who need to be won over to our cause to stop them from shooting us. It’s not even a serious attempt at self-organisation into union-like structures by police.
We might want to win some of them over anyway, of course, but it’s important to think about what that means in the situation we’re in. Being a copper is in direct conflict with being a socialist. The police form part of the armed wing of the state. Their reason for existence is to keep public order. We’re going to need to pretty much destroy public order to even begin to challenge capitalism (I mean, really, the bosses aren’t just going to handover the means of production with a ‘with compliments’ slip, yeah?). This much should be abundantly obvious to anyone who took part in the student protests last year. For us, winning over individual police is a case of persuading them not to be police any more.
Marching alongside them in their attempt to stop job cuts is hardly going to achieve this. Joining in such a demo explicitly suggests you don’t want a cut in police numbers. Kind of hard to then have individual arguments with coppers about not being coppers. Particularly when they’re marching for their right to be coppers.
Of course, some are making the argument that all cuts should be fought (who says the police even think this, and don’t want to sacrifice libraries, universities and healthcare to the crucial task of preventing anarchy?!) and, worse, that police cuts should be specifically opposed because crime hits working-class communities hardest.
Now, I’m not an anarchist (hi comrades!), and I don’t actually know anyone, anarchist or not, who calls for the immediate abolition of the police. It’s clear they play a (very) limited protective role, and that working-class areas suffer the highest crime rates, and report the highest levels of fear of crime. But to jump from recognising this to supporting the maintenance of police numbers is extremely dodgy ground. Why not call for more police and have done with it?
It’s also worth excavating what this says about your attitude to what crime is, and where it comes from. The Howard League for Penal Reform reports that 78% of all people sentenced to custody were convicted of non-violent crime. It’s a pretty much undisputed fact that the vast majority of crime is acquisitive – stealing stuff to make money, often in order to fund a drug addiction. Or, in the case of many women, crimes like shoplifting to support families – 54% of women in prison in 2000 cited their lack of money as a reason, 38% the need to support children and 33% having no job (Home Office PDF here).
Of course it’s shitty to be robbed, particularly when you haven’t got much yourself. That should absolutely be taken into consideration in any discussion of the effects of crime on working-class communities. So there it is. But it doesn’t mean sliding into rhetoric that occludes the underlying structural reasons for much crime – poverty, lack of opportunity, drugs, shit low-paid work, you name it – from a socialist analysis.
Worse, our chums at the Third Estate go on to complain about anti-social behaviour:
The day to day business of the police isn’t kettling protesters but protecting working class communities from anti-social scumbags
Some of what these ‘scumbags’ (ouch) do is pretty scary. I live on a pretty quiet estate, but I’m still intimidated by the kids hanging round the bus stop at 9pm and occasionally smashing bits of it. It’s much worse elsewhere. But this kind of statement fits uncomfortably in a debate about the police. Firstly, it misdirects the police’s primary function (sure they do more day-to-day on ASB than on political protest, but hey, it’s not the revolution yet, and watch priorities switch when it is…). But worse is what it implies, again, about what anti-social behaviour is and how to deal with it. Do we really want to maintain (or increase) police numbers as an antidote to low-level anti-social ‘crime’, with it’s myriad of underlying structural reasons (see above, add the destruction of working-class communities, youth clubs, housing issues, demonisation of the poor etc)? Sure, it can be annoying and frequently genuinely upsetting and life-affecting, but the solution isn’t calling for the big, shiny black jackboot of the law to stamp down on it. And then presumably send those involved to prison, or give them ASBOs (have they gone yet?) or something. Well, not if you’re a socialist anyway.
Even if the kids involved are just ‘scumbags’ (watch people get upset when you call the cops that…), without having any truck with any arguments about the social production of crime, would you want the police – the baton-wielding, state-upholding, frequently-deadly police – to ‘crack down’ on them, in this society, with all its cards stacked against these kids even before they see the inside of a court room? We’re not talking individual offenses here; the Third Estate tweets suggest the real structural problem is one of scummy working-class people versus nice working-class people (Alarm Clock Britain maybe?), as arbitrated by the police.
Never mind how the police routinely harass and intimidate people themselves, of course, producing their own chunk of fear in working-class communities. And I’m not even going to get into police priorities and procedures affecting crime stats, and showing just who gets pinched for what depends so strongly on class. Go read some Stuart Hall. Just stop hiding pretty unpleasant anti-working class sentiments behind the rhetoric of concern for the very same people. And don’t march to protect the police.
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I’m going to have a go at Reuben for abusing the thirdestate twitter feed to be a libertarian scumbag…
Comment by richard — January 12, 2011 @ 5:21 pm
Libertarians supporting bolstering the state? Confused libertarians…
Seriously, you guys should have initials after tweets or something, so we can tell you apart (and sort you into ‘shoot’ and ‘recruit’ boxes for the coming revolution, of course).
Comment by Sofie — January 12, 2011 @ 5:39 pm
Will respond full later, but just to be very clear I used the word “anti-social” as an adjective – one that preceded Blair. I did not refer to Anti-Social Behaviour – and absolutely oppose asbos. What this concerns is anti-social behaviour that is also criminal. A nuance that is not best suited to twitter.
Comment by Reuben — January 12, 2011 @ 6:29 pm
Does this mean that we should only march against the cuts that we personally disagree with?
If reduction of the police is your aim, then fair enough, but for me that doesn’t justify acceptance of “austerity” cuts, putting regular people out of work, just because those people happen to work for the police. If we start picking and choosing our cuts, then we’re not really anti-cuts, we’re just anti-cutting-stuff-we-like, which is motivated by self-interest.
A movement largely fronted right now by students is never going to have much success in convincing police officers to give up their jobs in order to join the struggle. All a student has to do in order to participate is skip the odd lecture to attend a flashmob, or occupy a room of their university. To expect people with families and mortgages to give up their jobs before they can participate is not reasonable when the entry requirements for every other group are so much more accessible.
Which isn’t to say that everybody should march with the police, if it comes to that – of course they shouldn’t if they don’t want to. Just that letting the Tories slash funding isn’t the right way to manage police numbers downward, and expecting coppers to give up their jobs in solidarity with workers is a far bigger gesture than any other group is being asked to make.
Comment by James — January 12, 2011 @ 8:01 pm
Reuben – that’s a distinction which, as you say, is blurred by Twitter, but also one that isn’t clear in what you said given the context of a debate on crime/policing.
But what constitutes criminal anti-social behaviour (and who sets the divide)? Maybe you could give us some examples of what you meant.
Take burglary for example, maybe. If you really think the every day job of the police is to ‘protect’ working-class communities from it, you’re wrong. Ever reported a burglary and had anyone take it seriously?
And even if you have, failing to account for *why* it happens suggests the police can just arrest someone, bang them up, sorted, working-class community safe and sound. Which is patently not the case. Not to mention sounding pretty close to the ‘lock em up’ argument of the right-wing press. Do you think prison actually solves anything Reuben? Do you support locking people up for acquisitive crime?
Comment by Sofie — January 12, 2011 @ 11:09 pm
“To expect people with families and mortgages to give up their jobs before they can participate is not reasonable ”
Yes, and nor is hitting people over the head with truncheons or keeping the standing in cramped conditions in sub-zero temperatures for hours. Or for that matter spying on people undercover for several years at vast public expense. However these are not exceptions, but the primary role of the police – to defend property and maintain order.
And yes the anti-cuts movement is fundamentally about self-interest, that’s the best thing about it (i.e. it has the potential to become a genuine class movement, whereas the anti-war, anti-summit and anti-roads movements previously, while all had their own strengths and weaknesses, were dealing with largely ‘external’ issues, and therefore could never really challenge things directly).
* It is self-interest to not want to lose your job, take a pay cut, lose EMA or avoid five figure debts.
* It is self-interest to want to keep mobility payments if you are otherwise house-bound.
* It is self-interest to want to keep benefits for your kids so you don’t have to take a second or third job.
* It is self-interest to want to be able to take a pension when you’re 65 (70, 75, 80).
It’s even self-interest when you’re not personally affected by particular cuts, but extend solidarity to others facing them, in the sure knowledge that you will one day have kids, be disabled or old. In other words, what will make this a genuine working class movement, rather than a ‘student movement’ or a liberal campaign issue, will be the working class uniting in it’s interests as a class – to defend basic living and working conditions, to extend them (although that’s extremely unlikely), and in the long view to eventually abolish itself and all other classes.
Also, while I think it’s largely a red-herring, plenty of people in the anti-cuts movement, particularly the same sort of people who talk about supporting the police, are very keen to see banker bonuses cut and chiefs of major corporations being forced to cough up. This is also a ‘cut’ – so no, all cuts are equal, and if you want to argue that, then you are going down a very strange route.
Comment by Mike Harman — January 13, 2011 @ 2:19 pm
What all this shows is there are many on the Left who are quite happy to see cuts and job losses amongst working class people if they are jobs which sections of the Left disagree with, in this case the police.
“To expect people with families and mortgages to give up their jobs before they can participate is not reasonable.”
Yes it is and those advocating working people giving up their jobs just because they disagree with their job are probably in a privilaged position.
Comment by Daniel Factor — July 22, 2011 @ 12:35 pm