Mirrored from
www.socialistparty.org.uk/pamphlets/state2006/1.htm on Mon, 14 Apr 2008
12:20:38 GMT (Edited to view outside CWI's frameset)
Marxism and the state: an exchange
1. Trade Union Rights! The Police and the Labour
Movement
Workers taking industrial action particularly when
organising picketing, a vital trade union right have time and again come
into conflict with the police. With the Tones' new anti-trade union
legislation, there are likely to be even bigger battles. Trade unionists
defending jobs and living standards fact the threat of jail either through
non-payment of fines or "contempt of court", or through collisions with police
trying to enforce limits on picketing or alleging "obstruction" or "public
order" offences.
Ironically, however, one of the last groups of potential
strikers to be threatened with imprisonment were the police themselves. This
was under the last, right-wing Labour government. The episode was only
publicised much later. The Sunday Times (9 August 1981) revealed: "The chairman
of the Police Federation, Jim Jardine, was threatened with imprisonment as
recently as 1977 though the threat was kept a secret at the time. It happened
when police, angry at low pay, howled down Merlyn Rees, the Home Secretary of
the day, at a meeting in Westminster Hall. Jim Jardine (a serving police
constable) was told by a senior officer that calls for strike action would have
to be strongly resisted otherwise he would be taken to court and face
imprisonment under the 1964 Police Act (under section 53 which prohibits
'causing disaffection')."
Strike action by the police was headed off with an immediate
10 per cent rise and the promise of an inquiry into their pay. When the Tory
government returned in 1979, Whitelaw announced the big increases recommended
by the inquiry with a big fanfare, clearly attempting to buy the police's
loyalty for future confrontation with the labour movement. However, it is clear
that in the period of police discontent before 1977 police were leaving at a
rapid rate, not only because of pay and conditions but because of disquiet at
the way they were being used against strikes and demonstrations.
The 1977 episode points to the contradictory character of the
police. While an arm of the stateincreasing one of the "armed bodies of
men" who make up the capitalists' repressive apparatusthe police, like
the armed forces, are composed of men and women drawn overwhelmingly from the
working class, and they have their interests and demands as workers. The police
pay disputes of 1970, 1975 and 1976-77 aroused growing demands for genuine
trade union organisation and action. The demand for the right to strike was
intensely debated. A majority of constables in a number of areas indicated in
referenda that they wanted strike action. The inspectors were against striking,
but the sergeants wavered in between. At the Police Federation conference in
Scarborough in May 1977 an overwhelming majority voted for strike action.
Federation leaders undoubtedly feared that some constables would take wild-cat
action if the leadership failed to move.
Grievances about pay and conditions and frustration with the
Federation had clearly produced the beginnings of trade union consciousness
among many police men and women. Among a minority, moreover, industrial
militancy had clearly begun to stimulate a more generalised class
consciousness, with a questioning of their role and their relationship with the
labour movement. At Scarborough a young Metropolitan constable said: "We're no
different from other workers. We may wear funny clothes and do society's dirty
work for them. But we come from the same stock as other workers. (Boos) We have
only our labour power to sell, not capital." (Quoted in Robert Reiner, The
Blue-Coated Worker) His speech was greeted with cat-calls and shouts of
"Commie", etc. Clearly, while militant on pay, the majority of delegates still
voiced backward, if not reactionary sentiments towards the labour movement and
on social issues. But the very fact that this class-conscious attitude could be
expressed by one delegate, even if he represented only a tiny minority at that
stage, is very significant.
The ranks of the police were affected by workers' struggles
from 1970-77, and many police looked to Labour for progress. But the police,
like most other workers, were disappointed by the Labour government's failure
to implement its programme. Labour's Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, summarily
rejected their call for the right to strike, while trying to persuade them
quietly to accept the government's wage-restraint policy. The record of the
Labour government, to say the least, was hardly calculated to swing the police
ranks towards the labour movement.
The 1977 episode, in itself, underlines the need for the
labour movement to adopt a worked-out policy towards the police. While opposing
the repressive use of the force, Labour must nevertheless appeal to the police
ranks. While campaigning for democratic accountability of the police, the
movement must also call for trade union rights for the police, with the
replacement of the Police Federation by a genuinely independent union
organisation. It is not only a question of defending the economic interests of
the police, but of working to bring the ranks of the police into the orbit of
the labour movement.
This has been opposed by some pseudo-Marxists as "Utopian".
They want to write off the police as "one reactionary mass", as though they
were a completely uniform, immutable instrument of repression. This is a
completely one-sided, incorrect view which takes no account of the changes
which can be produced by events.
It is undoubtedly true that there are reactionaries in the
police. Clearly, there are racialists and some fascist sympathisers within the
ranks, and democratic accountability would be used to make sure that these were
weeded out. In recent years, moves from the top to shape the police into a more
repressive force and the aggressive operational tactics increasingly adopted by
local police chiefs has led many of the more reasonable types to leave the
force. Recruiting and training is undoubtedly directed towards producing the
kind of police the state requires under new conditions. But ultimately the mood
and outlook of the police, the balance between their repressive role and the
police ranks' own class demands, still depends on the balance of class and
political forces in society.
The 1968 May events in France are an example of the way the
police can move under conditions of crisis.
The mass strike movement, which involved ten million workers,
was actually "detonated" by police repression of student demonstrations,
particularly by the brutal actions of the riot police, the para-military CRS.
However, as one writer on the police, Tom Bowden, comments: "...While the
police were prepared to brutally subdue one of their natural opponents,
middle-class students, they were most unwilling to batter those whom they felt
to be their worker brothers into submission...Accordingly, they tacitly let it
be known that operations against workers could not only cause a grave crisis of
confidence within their ranks but also the possibility of what would in effect
be a police mutiny." (Tom Bowden: Beyond the Limits of the Law.) In fact,
leaders of one of the police unions stated publicly that they would not move
against workers. The police were neutralised, or in the case of some sections,
drawn behind the workers' movement, and De Gaulle's government was suspended in
mid-air.
Another example was in Germany at the end of the First World
War. In the crisis, the labour movement took over Berlin, appointing Emil
Eichorn, a leader of the left-wing Independent Social Democrats, as police
president. "Under his command," writes one of Rosa Luxemburg's biographers,
"the police seemed to be turning into a revolutionary institution." (Peter
Netti, Rosa Luxemburg). It was the move of the reactionary central government
under the right-wing Social Democrats Ebert and Noske to depose Eichorn which
precipitated the "Spartakist" uprising in January 1919.
In Britain, too, the mass struggles of the working class
between 1913 and 1919 gave rise to a struggle within the police for an
independent trade union. The illegal Police and Prison Officers Union gradually
forged links with the labour movement, and its leaders called for the
democratisation of the police. There had been strikes of the Metropolitan
Police over pay in 1872 and 1890. But the most significant strikes were in 1918
and 1919 during the post-war crisis. In 1918, almost all of the Metropolitan
force of 19,000 came out in sympathy with their leaders who had been
victimised. However, in 1919 a second strike, which led to battles with the
army in Merseyside, was broken by the authorities. The government made
concessions on pay and conditions, but purged the militants and completely
smashed the union. The Police Federation was then established as a tame
substitute for a union. At the same time, moves were made to undermine the
powers of local watch committees and establish firm central control over local
forces.
These examples should be enough to show that the police are
not one, unchanging reactionary mass. The police, too, are affected by the
crisis in societyand can be influenced by the working class when it moves
into action. A correct policy towards the police on the part of the labour
movement, however, is a vital factor.
Continued...
Pamphlet Contents |