Write-up by CM of discussion on 13th March 2008.

Three new people came to this meeting, JP, RC and CD, and were warmly welcomed.

GB spoke to the paper he had prepared, and CM noted the following:

Taking a normative as well as a legal view of crime.

In the public arena, violent assault etc.

Moral panics, esp. terrorism, used to strip out basic rights, hence instead of someone help by police having to be charged or released within 24 hours, we now have 28 days, which is an outrage.

Trespass on nuclear sites is now included as terrorism.

In the public’s view, crime is rising, actually it is steady, even falling.

ASBOs have been brought in, imposed for a wide range of activities, effectively criminalising things not otherwise illegal, and demonise young people.

Public perception / information comes from crime surveys from interviews plus police figures, which are always skewed.

There has been a rise in young people carrying knives, but not in the numbers of attacks. Young people are feeling sour about life. They are intimidating. There is excessive drinking. They have no direction and are self-destructive.

Rising social tensions is a real problem. Collective approaches are essential.

Prison figures are high in the UK, 148 per 100,000 are locked up. In France it is half that, germany 95, Italy 104 (check)

Straw’s solution is to build big prisons, keep them out of town, which is bonkers as a policy, and expensive, costing £2.7bn per annum, equivalent to staying in posh hotels every night.

What should we do?

Defend civil liberties.

Focus on communities that express working class feelings – address separation of young people.

Police are the class enemy – or there’s the ‘smiling Bobby’.

The personal is the political.

Break down social alienation. The current ‘white working class’ season on TV will whip up racism.

There is an inherent danger in multi-culturalism.

Group discussion

CM: You didn’t mention drugs, high proportion of people in prison have committed crimes to fund drug habits.

(GB added this topic to his paper.)

GB: Drugs: these are never the fundamental thing – why are people on drugs? To escape society – it’s a vicious circle. Government is ambivalent on this.

Locking people up demonises millions, and is used as social control, in the US used to deny particular sectors the vote and manipulate election results.

DP: I’ve been involved in anti-fascist action, a ‘red action’ group, IWCA (independent working class association), which has a workerist basis, and has a sociological perspective of the working class, had a reactionary platform, defended people on council homes, especially anti-social behaviour – the Left has been silent on anti-social behaviour.

There’s a difference between groups of students being merry and noisy and a working class area – Rifford Road – where people are screaming they will kill each other – very alienated people. Burnthouse Lane increased density of single parent families, petty crime especially on cars. ‘Problem families’ put there in 1930s.

CM: Social problems due to unemployment and lack of prospects, apprenticeships etc. Read recently that only 13% of jobs in the UK are in manufacturing, when years ago we made everything pretty much here. So, what jobs are there?

JP: Lower grade jobs are being phased out. Eg opening the post, now this is a multi-skill job. Similarly filing clerks. Typists are gone. Employers are asking more for their money.

PH: Lot of people are NIEET: not in employment education or training. Even the army don’t want lost souls. Resources should go into how to address that. Most people in prison are not 16-17 year-olds.

RC: There is a social housing issue – blocks of people just those with problems, eg depression, alcohol, drugs – Burthhouse Lane not much like that, just boring place to live.

GB: When I was a child mums and dads worked, eventually bought own homes. There was over-full employment everywhere. Council estates were different places, not depressed.

RC: People only get social housing if they’ve got particular problems. If they’re all put in one box, you get more social problems.

JP: Problem is individualism – the issue is how to get people engaged in social attitudes.

GB: Socialism and solidarity have declined, instead there is Right communitarianism – authoritarian.

CD: BNP are more like Nazis, strong on myth. Any success leads to internal dissension.

DP: Nick Griffen – respectable side of BNP.

Crime and drugs, Trial in Plymouth. No prison if agree to treatment programmes. Burglary rate would be halved.

GB: How do we stop the working class tearing itself apart?

Rich criminals – like the Saudis – engage in illegal activities but are protected from prosecution.

RC: A collective response to crime is needed, things like neighbourhood watch.

GB: Exeter Council wanted to sell off Council housing into private sector, had a public consultation, and the feedback was so hostile they had to drop the scheme – the Socialist Alliance organised opposition, most positive thing they did. But the Council got their own back, saying they had no money for maintenance.

DP: This was Council house blackmail. My girlfriend lives in an area which is 50% privately owned. Was Council housing where people shared concerns. Since Thatcher and ‘no such thing as society’ this has gone. Some are multi-occupied flats.

There are problems even for those young men who sign up for apprenticeships, where they are paid less than the minimum wage, can’t get anywhere to live because they have to pay a month’s rent in advance and can’t get loans. One youth I know of had to live with his parents who charged him rent, and he couldn’t afford it and had to be taken in by a friend.

PH: Some housing was bought to let and there’s a high turnaround of tenants – a new face every month.

This business of 28 days detention – perhaps there’s a reason. It takes a very long time to decrypt information on an impounded computer, so the police need that long – twentieth century problems.

CM: The terrorist threat is exaggerated – remember what Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan, told us about people ‘confessing’ under torture and signing lists of ‘collaborators’, and the lists are passed to CIA, thence to MI5/6 here and regarded as ‘operationally useful’, which means they are used to make out there are thousands of terrorists here – so long detention is necessary.

GB: Once there was a small State, we were pretty free, now there’s CCTV everywhere, we’re all on databases, we can all be tracked all the time – it’s verging on totalitarianism.

Anarchists used to make bombs and killed the Presidents of France and America – was that so bad? That didn’t lead to a controlled society. Now it’s qualitatively different – with the sheer extent of control – also incompetence.

RC: The State now is huge, opposite to the classic liberal view.

JP: We should think about people’s views – we discuss the 28 days here, but we should talk to other people, other trades unions even – not assume everyone out there thinks the same as we do.

GB: Many people are unworried by surveillance, identity cards etc.

JP: They say why should I worry if I’ve done nothing wrong?

DP: There’s the whole agenda of civil liberties and the right to protest. In the centre of Exeter the police can move on any group of more than two, and they can be arrested if they refuse to move.

GB: A lot of new laws are aimed at youth. Crime is in the way of society’s attempts to unify people.

Workers Revolutionary Party in the 60s, mods and rockers believing they could lead a revolution – led to farce. They were high on amphetamines – they were working and could pay for drugs.

Future meetings

DP talked a bit about the Manchester Group of Socialists – diverse group, similar to the Socialist Alliance, are organising a conference in September – an alternative Conference of the Left in parallel with the Labour Party Conference. Respect Renewal, the Galloway part of the old Respect will be there. It’s socialists, anarchists and greens. The editor of Red pepper is involved. It’s a non-sectarian attempt to bring socialists together.

Next meeting, 10 th April, RC offered to lead off on ‘Can there be good as well as bad capitalism?’

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