From The Archives (1) - Socialism, Democracy and the State

This is an article I wrote, which appeared in SO 244, September 1985, as a centre page spread. Its relevance, then, was obvious following the defeat of the miners, and start of the onslaught by Thatcher on the rest of the working-class, using the methods of a strong state. However, its contents remain relevant, not just in understanding, how we arrived, here, but as we enter a period, once more of strong state tactics by a reactionary, nationalist Tory Party, and the prospect of a reactionary nationalist Blue Labour government, under the Bonapartist leadership of Starmer. It is also a far cry from the politics of SO's current manifestation – the AWL – whose members argue that the capitalist state “defends workers interests” alongside “imperialism”!

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Socialism, Democracy and the State

A Tory students' poster shows a soviet tank with the words “If you think the Soviet threat is a myth, ask a Pole”. On it someone had written, “If you think the British state threat is a myth, ask a miner”.

In recent years, we have seen:

• The creation of a national police force, during the miners' strike
  
  
• Special strong arm groups of police have been created – Special Patrol Group, Instant Response Units – modelled on paramilitary forces like the CRS in France
  
  
• The right to free movement no longer exists. Pickets have been prevented from moving around the country, and peace protesters prevented from entering Molesworth for fear of another Peace camp being established. Residents in the village now have their own passes to get in an out
  
  
• Widespread phone-tapping and other surveillance is carried on against trade unionists, socialists and peace activists
  
  
• The Police Act has now made legal many of the formerly illegal, but customary practices of the police.
  

Juries are vetted to ensure that no one sits on them who holds “deviant” views, i.e. opposes the status quo.

British capitalism is sick, even sicker than the system as a whole. Over the last two decades, the British labour movement has not been strong enough to replace the bourgeoisie, but it has been strong enough to repel the bosses' attacks like the Industrial Relations Act.

So, the capitalist class has attacked with greater force. The Tories laid their plans (the Ridley Report), replenished their arsenal (more, better-trained and equipped police, new anti-union laws) and took on the miners.

In the wake of the miners' defeat, socialists must take the threat to civil liberties seriously, and work on a programme for defending and extending democratic rights.

The need for a police force seems to most people to be obvious, yet the police force has existed for only just over a century.

The working class was hostile to the new force. In North Staffordshire, in 1842, for example:

“During the week the inhabitants of Lane End have been in a state of fearful apprehension and excitement from the disorderly conduct of a number of persons in the lowest ranks of society. We have been at considerable trouble to attain accurate information as to the cause of the tumult and find that the principal one is the extreme aversion and hatred entertained by the parties towards the new police force lately established in that neighbourhood.” (North Staffordshire Mercury, May 11, 1842)

Nevertheless, in a broad historical view, there was something progressive about the establishment of police forces. The arbitrary private power of the landlords, squires and magistrates was replaced by a public power, operating under publicly decided general laws and procedures.

Public Power

Now, we see that public power becoming more and more a power against the public. In times of sharp class struggle, it becomes clear that the police enforce the interests not of the majority, but of the ruling class. Their rigid hierarchy, their training, their separation from the rest of society, and the personal ties of their upper ranks make sure that they do that.

Society, today, has an alternative, more democratic way of regulating itself – patrols organised and controlled by the labour movement and local communities. Police duty should be made a part-time job of every citizen, like jury service.

To bring that about, we will have to break up and dismantle the existing police force. In the meantime, we must fight for more control over it.

The police force, in Britain, is marked by the almost complete absence of democratic control. Police Committees exist (except in London) but a large proportion of their members are unelected magistrates, and they have virtually no power.

In Merseyside, it has recently been reported – though officially denied by the cops – that the police have mounted surveillance on Labour members of the Police Committee whom they find too argumentative. Who's controlling whom?

The following demands would be a start in democratising the police force in Britain.

• Chief Constables and their Assistants to be elected at regular fixed periods
  
  
• Directly elected Police Committees to have full operational control over the police force in their area. The power to instantly dismiss Chief Constables who act contrary to their instructions, and to call fresh elections for a new Chief Constable. Access to any police station and to police files at any time for members of the Committee
  
  
• Democratic rights within the police force, including the right to form trade unions. The right not be used as scab-herders

The recent revelations about MI5 confirm that the secret service is far more concerned about surveillance of the labour movement and peace movement than with Russian spies. And they passed on their information to the Tories so that they could use it against CND and the Labour Party in the last General Election.

Not even Parliament can discuss their activities or financing. Far from MI5 being under government control, members of the last Labour government were probably themselves the subject of surveillance by it.

MI5 and the other branches of the secret service should, therefore, be scrapped.

Britain has been at war, somewhere or other – Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden, Oman, Northern Ireland, the Falklands – continuously, since 1945. Not once have these wars been about defending the people of Britain. They have all been about defending British ruling class power overseas.

General Frank Kitson has explained in his book “Low Intensity Operations”, that he sees the future of the British Army as mainly in “counter insurgency”. For him, the war against the Catholic community in Northern Ireland is a test run for later operations against the British working class.

Field Marshall Michael Carver has revealed that, in 1974, “some fairly senior officers” talked about a military coup should labour unrest continue. They were slapped down, then, by more sober-minded superiors. But, next time? And the coup-planners of 1974 are now people at the top of the hierarchy themselves.

Instead of strengthening the armed forces of the capitalist state, the Labour Party should be advocating:

• Replace the armed forces with a people's militia
  
  
• Scrap all nuclear weapons – we have no control over them and no desire to see the world destroyed
  
  
• Britain out of NATO, NATO out of Britain
  
  
• Democratic rights for troops. The armed forces depend on rigid, mindless discipline to act as anti working-class bodies
  
  
• Workers control of the armaments industry, and conversion of the bulk of it to socially useful production under workers' plans

Four-fifths of all judges come from public school and Oxbridge backgrounds. Their background, training, and way of life makes them all hostile to the working-class.

Lord Denning ruled the GLC's cheap fares illegal and said that if a Labour government attempted to abolish the House of Lords, the courts should rule it unconstitutional.

Lord Donaldson, the Master of the Rolls, has commented that “The legal system is not in practice even-handed as between employers and unions; current functions put the courts almost entirely in the business of restricting the latter, and not of remedying their grievances.”

Not only judges but also magistrates and JP's are unelected. They are chosen only after they have shown themselves staunch supporters of the status quo. JP's drawn from the ranks of the Labour Party and trade unions usually try to prove themselves by being even more reactionary than the Tories.

• All judges, JP's and magistrates should be elected
  
  
• End all vetting of juries
  
  
• All legal representation to be paid for by the state. Wealth should not determine whether you get a fair trial
  
  
• Defendants to have access to police files on them and other witnesses etc. involved in the case

The modern civil service dates back to reforms proposed by the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854 and introduced because Britain's Crimean War was being undermined by he total incompetence of the civil service. Its growth was a major element in shifting day to day power from Parliament and the monarchy to a bureaucratic machine.

Within the civil service, real power lies with the 500 or so Permanent Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries and Under Secretaries that make up the higher civil service.

Between 1948 and 1956, 78% of those recruited to the position of Assistant Principal had attended Oxford or Cambridge universities; in 1957-63 this actually increased to 85%; and, in 1971 and 1972 was still more than half.

By background, education, personal situation and connections, the top civil servants are flesh and blood of the ruling class. Many go on from the civil service to top jobs in finance and industry.

They have tremendous power and influence. Ministers move from one Department to another every two or three years, but the higher civil servants are in their posts for a lifetime.

The civil servants can use their control of information to get Ministers to adopt particular courses of action, and discard others.

Benn

When the last Labour government was elected, so Tony Benn reports, the Civil Servants in the Department of Industry had prepared a report for the incoming minister which was marked “For the attention of the Minister, unless Mr. Benn.”

The cases of Clive Ponting and Sarah Tisdall illustrate the conservative bias of the civil service and the way it operates to keep many public affairs secret from the public.

An irresolute, unprepared, reforming government can easily have its measures filtered down, delayed and neutralised by the civil service machine. And a determined, radical left-wing government would certainly face open sabotage.

The Official Secrets Act should be abolished; a Freedom of Information Act introduced; and top civil service jobs made elective.

It took a long and sometimes bloody struggle by the labour and women's movements to get our present rights to vote. But, at the same time as the capitalist class has conceded wider voting rights, it has protected itself by moving real power away from Parliament.

Every four or five years we get that vote that our ancestors fought so hard for. Control of the media - and the first past the post electoral system – give two big parties a near monopoly, and drive these two parties towards the “centre” ground of politics. Even the SDP-Liberal Alliance – well connected, wealthy, favoured by the media – has had great trouble breaking through. Little surprise, then, that radical or revolutionary views can't get represented in Parliament.

Control

Then, once the MP's are elected, Parliament is almost entirely controlled by the leadership of the government party – which work much more closely with top civil servants, bankers and industrialists than with any elected MP's. Manifesto promises are routinely ignored. Many important decisions are taken outside Parliament.

And, even if by some fluke a determined, cohesive majority of MP's opposed to the status quo should be elected, the other institutions of Parliament would stand in the way of change.

Between 1906 and 1910 the Liberal government had 18 bills thrown out by the House of Lords. Things boiled over when the Lords threw out the Liberals Budget of 1909. The Liberals called a General Election over the issue, and threatened to create 1,000 new Liberal peers. Having won the election, the Liberals passed the 1911 Parliament Act, which said that the Lords could only delay Bills, not stop them altogether. That power to delay was further reduced by the Labour government of 1948. But, it is still a substantial – and firmly conservative power.

And, then, before any Bill can become law, it must be given Royal Assent. Normally, this is a formality: Kings and Queens have signed Bills which the Tories vehemently denounced. But, what would happen if a labour government tried to abolish the House of Lords, amidst cries by leading judges that this was unconstitutional? Let alone if a Labour government legislated directkly socialist measures?

Reserve

The monarchy represents an important reserve power for the ruling class in case of crisis.

For example, it is the Monarch who has he power to dissolve parliament. She could use that power to force an election. A similar thing was done in Australia, as recently as 1975. The Governor-General – the Queen's representative – sacked the reforming Labour government of Gough Whitlam.

Constitutionally, the courts, the police, the armed forces etc. derive their authority no from the government but from the Crown. In such a crisis, the Queen could call on all these institutions to “defend the Constitution”.

Over a hundred years after they were raised some of the demands of the Chartists still have not been met. For example, the demand for annual elections. It is ludicrous for any government to claim that the result of an election gives them a mandate for up to five years after, especially as, in that time, most of them renege on what they promised. Annual elections would ensure that governments were far more accountable, and that they would be less likely to renege on their promises. If Britain was to live up to even the ideals of bourgeois-democracy, then the following demands would have to be met:

• Annual elections on a fixed date
  
  
• Voting to be by proportional representation, the current first past the post system amounts to ballot rigging
  
  
• Scrap the deposit and other qualifications for candidates
  
  
• Equal TV and radio time for all parties except fascists

Most bourgeois democracies have laws setting out the right to strike – though with qualifications and limits. Britain has none. All the legal right of trade unions, in Britain, are “immunities” which exempt unions from the general laws about conspiracy, breach of contract etc. Indeed, thee are there are no basic human rights for British citizens which Parliament cannot constitutionally take away.

A major step forward for civil liberties, in Britain, would therefore be to adopt a written Bill of Rights as exists America and most other bourgeois democracies.

Whilst the experience of the Equal Pay Act and the Sex and Race Discrimination Acts show that such legal documents are no guarantee of equality, it is better to have such documents to refer to than not to have them.

Bringing women's, black and lesbian/gay groups together with the trade unions and labour movement and groups like the NCCL to discuss the elements of a Bill of Rights could be the basis of a strong campaign. The campaign for such a Bill of Rights could be conducted on the same basis as the Chartists and Suffragettes campaigned for their demands – by industrial action and civil disobedience.

The best constitution in the world cannot guarantee that the rights it provides for are met. At the end of the day, only class struggle determines that. But, the balance of forces in the class struggle itself depends, partly, on what rights are written into law at any particular time.

Rights

The question of democratic rights is therefore, of great importance for the labour movement. The labour movement should put itself at the head of a campaign to defend and extend democratic rights in Britain.

This could undermine the Tories and set the stage for a revival and regeneration of the labour movement.

As Lenin put it:

“Even in England (i.e. not just in Tsarist Russia, or Imperial Germany) we see that powerful social groups support the privileged position of that institution (the Civil Service). Why?

Because it is in the interests of the proletariat alone to democratise it completely; the most progressive strata of the bourgeoisie defend certain prerogatives of the bureaucracy and are opposed to the election of all officials, opposed to the complete abolition of electoral qualifications, opposed to making officials responsible to the people etc., because these strata realise that the proletariat will take advantage of such complete democratisation in order to use it against the bourgeoisie.

… when economic and political issues, and socialist and democratic activities are united into one whole, into the class struggle of the proletariat, this does not weaken but strengthens the democratic movement and the political struggle, by bringing it closer to the real interests of the mass of the people, dragging political issues out of the 'stuffy studies of the intelligentsia' into the street, into the midst of the workers and labouring masses...”