The Old Arrangements Failing, Tony Blair Proposes Summary Justice

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

The Old Arrangements Failing, Tony Blair Proposes Summary Justice

Hunger Strike in Protest against Government Human Rights Abuses

Rammell’s Plan to Incorporate the Trade Union Movement into Making Britain Competitive

30th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising

"Our nation’s future" was the title given by Tony Blair to his speech on Friday on the criminal justice system. This presumably was to highlight the importance he attached to the issue, as the subject matter did not tally with the label. It suggests a life and death threat to a national entity which was not made explicit in his speech, neither in terms of the threat nor in terms of a definition of the nation.

Rather the subject matter was framed in terms of a personal journey, thus emphasising that policy making to Tony Blair is a matter of the conviction of the leader. In this respect, what is also implicit is that the "nation" in question is one which is defined through its rallying round the values of the leader. Tony Blair, of course, presents this presumption in an upside-down way: he is the one who is in touch and responding to the mass of "ordinary, decent law-abiding folk" (his own description, one redolent of the nazi conception of "volk" and a self-serving phrase of fascist organisations). It is a medievalist conception of everyone showing the proper degree of respect for authority, as against the modern conception of everyone having rights by virtue of being human.

In fact, Blair’s speech given at Bristol university was the first of a series of "lectures" on domestic policy to be given under the slogan "Our Nation's Future". Tony Blair has said that his aim is to provoke a national debate on the future of the criminal justice system, which he said was a public service, to be reformed in the same fashion as the National Health Service or the education system. It is, according to Blair, a dispenser of justice, to be the subject of "best practice", utilising "different and new providers". This logic and analogy suggests that before long the "victims" of crime will be described as consumers of justice and given a choice between the different providers who will compete in dispensing the justice, not that fits the crime but is tailored to suit the demands of the consumer. Put in this fashion, the very principle of equality before the law is jettisoned, along with the principle of being tried by a jury of one’s peers. Tony Blair tells us in this connection that the "blunt reality" is that for the foreseeable future, the measures that John Reid is to propose at the end of July "will mean an increase in prison places". Blair’s answer is merely to pass more laws, set more central targets. At the same time, he invokes the "voluntary sector" in the "management of offenders"

In his speech, Tony Blair traced the history of criminal and social behaviour over the last century, with the decline of fixed employment and settled families and the corresponding increase in crime, an increase with which courts and government could not always cope. That is Tony Blair’s argument. One would be forgiven for thinking that he had no knowledge of the struggle for prison reform and was invoking a golden age when the people had stable lives and were content with the social system. Or of the 1930s of the depression and the preparation of the financial oligarchy for fascism and war, when, according to Blair, "millions of people … suffered … without resorting to crime".

The reality is that the old arrangements of governance have broken down and political and democratic renewal is required. In the period after the second world war, the people’s aspirations were demanding a social system in which a sovereign economy could prosper, the workers would be in control of the wealth which they produce and the people would be the decision-makers. When New Labour came to power in 1997, the people’s aspirations were defeat the anti-social offensive and again go on to achieving the implementation of the public good. But the world had changed, in the sense that the crisis had deepened, reaction was seizing the initiative, the big powers and especially Anglo-US imperialism were preparing for war and the dictate of the corporate state domestically.

In these circumstances, after nine years in power, the domestic and international crisis has become increasingly dangerous for the people. Instead of the old arrangements, Tony Blair is proposing summary "justice". Rights are inalienable. It is not and cannot be that the penal reformers, the judiciary and so on, have "tilted the balance" in favour of the "criminal" and against "those who keep the law". Rather it is that the ruling elite is criminalising dissent, is criminalising behaviour as "anti-social", precisely as the fabric of society is unravelling. The monopoly press is part of this equation, and it is not simply that the government is taking its lead from the tabloids. At the same time, the government has passed more than 40 crime bills and created 700 new offences since it came to power, according to reports from those who have counted them, and wants to pass more to "plug the gaps".

Tony Blair is flying in the face of the people’s social consciousness which is derived from the society in which they live and the aspirations they have for a different world, and the need for a change in the relations of production. He is also in severe contradiction not only with this consciousness and the public will, but with the judiciary and legal profession, who he is admonishing time and again that the rules of the game have changed, but who time and again are emphasising that human rights are inviolable and cannot be based on these changing rules.

Tony Blair is facing a crisis in moulding public opinion: he insists that "it is the culture of political and legal decision-making that has to change, to take account of the way the world has changed. … It is a complete change of mindset." He wants to put in place laws that reflect "the reality of the street and community in which real people live real lives". This is the politics of hysteria, obscurantism and reaction. The society in which people live is part of the world in which the British government has committed aggression against Iraq with the US, in which it is determined to impose its will by force. The "war on terror" domestically is taking society down the path of a police state. This is the reality which has its reflection on the "street and community in which real people live real lives".

The "radical change in political and legal culture" which Tony Blair advocates in these circumstances is summary justice, that is impunity of the state and its forces not accountable to the rule of law. It must not and will not go unopposed.

On June 12, a Somali detainee climbed onto the roof at Campsfield House, an immigration and asylum detention centre in Kidlington near Oxford. On the roof he threatened to kill himself with a rope and a plastic bag. He had been a detainee for four months. His detention is indefinite, and, as the High Court has just ruled once again, unlawful.

On June 14, over 100 detainees began a hunger strike in protest at their being locked up indefinitely and without trial. Below is their statement of May 15, 2006, highlighting the plight of innocent people detained indefinitely in detention centres in Britain.

The Hunger Strikers' Spokesperson, Antony Aghayere, who has been speaking to the media, has been held in isolation since 1800 hrs on Monday, June 19. This exceeds the 24 hours maximum believed to be allowed for isolation of non-violent detainees.

Statement from Campsfield detainees, Wednesday, 15th May 2006:

"WE ARE DETAINEES at Campsfield removal centre in Oxford. Most of us have been here for a long while now. There are people who have been detained for up to two years and down to three months. We are cramped in here like animals. We are treated like animals and moved around different detention centres like animals. The immigration service have taken husbands from their families and taken people who ran away from persecution in their various countries, and dumped everyone in here.

Once you are put in here the immigration service forget you. There are detainees who have applied to go back to their own countries that are still being held here for months without any news about their cases, just so that the private security companies get more money.

Detainees are asked to seek asylum and then refused. The immigration service also ask detainees to apply for bail. When you get a bail hearing date all of a sudden they serve you with removal papers that are not valid. There are many of these situations. In most cases the immigration service don't take you to your court hearings. And then they tell the judges you refused to turn up, just so the hearing goes ahead in your absence. Many detainees have been served with removal papers and travel documents but nothing happens on the removal day.

Campsfield has become a slave house. We detainees are treated like slaves, to do odd jobs for officers. Detainees are handcuffed to see doctors or dentists in hospitals or clinic appointments. We have some racist security officers who make racist comments to detainees and go out of their way to make you feel like committing suicide. Detainees have to be at the point of death before they get to see the doctors.

The food is not worth eating. Even dogs would refuse to eat what we eat. But we don't have a choice; every single day we eat the same food (the food we eat is rice, chicken, sandwiches, and left-over eggs)".

On June 9, Bill Rammell, the minister for Higher Education, gave a speech at the East of England regional Unionlearn launch (see http://www.unionlearn.org.uk). Taking the aims of society as given, the speech, tailored towards the trade unions, defined the tasks of society in terms of building a high technology, high skill society to compete with other countries.

"Raising the skill levels of all our people is at the heart of this government's agenda to build not only a more successful economy but a fairer and more equal society," said Mr Rammell. "The union movement shares this agenda. You know that we won't be able to compete with other countries on the basis of low productivity and low talent. You know that we must compete through higher productivity, higher skills and cutting edge innovation and science." For the government, competition, or maximisation of profit for the monopolies, is the starting point.

"We have helped to make society more cohesive, fairer and more just," Mr Rammell claimed. For the trade union leaders, "cohesive society" can be read as meaning class compromise, but more fundamentally, it is about de-classing the workers. Hence, Mr Rammell spoke about a society where "everyone has the opportunity to go as far as their efforts and talents will take them, regardless of ethnicity, disability, gender or social class" (our emphasis). This means the workers giving up their interests as a class, and even further, denying their very nature. It means the workers giving up their struggle for rights for some implied greater good, which is ultimately what is good for big business (competitiveness, productivity).

Indeed, the speech itself referred to rights – "the government has introduced rights at work and created work in which to exercise those rights" – and mentioned in passing the "basic right to an education". The idea is that "rights" at work are based on the "social partnership" between workers and their employers to make Britain ("the nation", "us") a winner in the global marketplace. The "right" to an education is then based on the "opportunity" to work.

In other words, everybody should have the opportunity to work (the contradiction with an economic system that necessitates unemployment notwithstanding) and has the duty to work in cohesion with their employers, this duty providing the context in which their "rights at work" are defined. This is the basis of the government's notion of the right to an education, which is therefore twofold: to increase employability, education providing those skills necessary for big business; and to instil the correct work ethic that will create "cohesion". This is the basis, rather than education being in the service of society and everyone having the right to an education on that basis.

Immediately, this is about the issue of who decides: the right to participate in deciding the direction of the economy, and to have a say in terms of aims, is not recognised, and the workers should not demand such rights. Generally, it is to ensure that the workers on no account go for socialism: instead of the values of the collective and throwing off exploitation, there is substituted "lifelong learning" and the kind of education for uniting around the Labour Party and competing in the global market that Mr Rammell spoke about.

And so Mr Rammell finished by saying, "I firmly believe that unionlearn will help trade unions to raise their game to another level. It will place learning and skills at the heart of trade unionism and it will put trade unions at the very centre of the nation's skills strategy – right were they belong." Instead, the working class must put itself right where it belongs: at the centre of the nation's political life.

Friday, June 16, was the Day of the African Child, celebrated all around Africa. It marked the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings, when thousands of children rose up to defy the South African apartheid state forces, and were brutally mowed down. We salute the spirit of the youth in daring to take a stand and shape the direction of their own and their country’s future.

It is now well-recognised that the uprising of the youth, and the martyrdom of many of their number, was a watershed in the history of the struggle in South Africa and in the liberation struggles of the people of Africa. The children on that day in 1976 were not just taking to the streets to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans, the language of their oppressors, but represented the growing consciousness that the African people themselves had to take matters into their own hands. The massacre that ensued and the detentions and imprisonment under the Terrorism Act and subsequent torture aroused the utmost outrage and condemnation from the world’s democratic forces. They were a spur to the people further organising themselves to overthrow the apartheid regime. The letter from Nelson Mandela smuggled out from Robben Island and made public two years later testifies vividly to this fact.

As the speech by the Deputy President of the ANC in Durban on June 16 this year said: "We meet during one of the most important days on the calendar of our country, a day on which we remember and celebrate the determination, heroism and bravery of our youth. Each year when we remember the heroes and heroines, who fell in Soweto on 16 June 1976, we emerge with renewed vigour and a deeper sense of purpose, to achieve all the goals they had in mind when they risked their lives for the freedom of our land.

"We have come a long way since that fateful day, when children stood up against the apartheid security forces and made it clear that they would chart their own future.

"On such a day we recall and appreciate that the freedoms we now enjoy did not come about through some goodness of the hearts of the oppressor, but the blood, sweat, tears and supreme sacrifice of our people. We are today drawing strength from the life of Hector Peterson and all the children and youth who lie buried throughout our country, as young soldiers and innocent victims who fell in the struggle for the liberation of our country."

He went on to quote, as did Thabo Mbeki, the message issued in exile on August 26, 1976, inspired by the heroism of the youth who stood against the brutal massacre and defied police bullets in a sustained offensive against oppression, exploitation and racial humiliation, for political and economic power and for human dignity: "Demonstrations and acts of resistance in Soweto and other parts of the country are, therefore, not riots by anti-social elements but blows for liberation by an oppressed people. They are not passing disturbances by adventurous and misguided students but an integral part of the continuing and irrepressible liberation struggle of our people. Our youth have raised this struggle to new heights. They have enriched our revolution. The struggle continues.''

This is the spirit that inspires the African peoples today in their present struggle against the relations of exploitation which the US and Britain, under the banner of the G8 and of a "humanitarian" and "civilising" mission, seek to impose and perpetuate on the continent of Africa. It cannot be forgotten that the British government backed to the hilt the South African white racist regime, and a principled stand of the British government today would be to denounce the crimes of racism, colonialism and slavery for which Britain was responsible and agree to pay reparations for these crimes against the African peoples. Where there is a will there is a way!

The youth of today also are moved by and find inspiration in the fight for freedom of the June 16 youth and their martyrs. They too pledge to build a bright future for themselves and for all future generations.