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Page 5
Tories caught up in law and order' machine A growing crisis is emerging as public and ruling class confidence in the traditional Institutions of bourgeois justice collapses in Britain. PIERS MOSTYN examines the implications of this for socialists. "Law and Order' has been a Tory priority since 1979; but criminal justice institutions are becoming as much the "problem" as the society they are supposed to be control- ling. A critique of this set-up as coercive, partisan and corrupt - once confined to the far left, black and Irish victims of in- justice or trade unionists - has now become common cur- rency. How deep does this crisis run? What has caused it? With a General Election not far off, are any solutions on offer from the main parties? The law and order process, in all its component parts, is being swept by scandals, crises of public confidence, crises of morale and angst-ridden debate. At the centre of this are the police (examined in greater detail in Socialist Outlook no 24 by Jane Wells). Legal actions against the police have soared in numbers, and the exposure of malpractice, frame-ups, racism and thuggery has become routine. Police morale is said to be low. The force is disoriented by finding itself the subject of criticism yet unsure of turning to its political friends for help. Once the darl- ings of the Tory administration, - pampered by booming salaries and recruitment - police officers are now being hit by the poll tax, budgetary restrictions and threats to their pay guarantees. Home Secretary • Wad- dington was greeted by silence at the Police Federation's annual conference. Relations between the police and the Police Complaints Authority (PCA), have be- come strained. The PCA has for long been defended by the Tories and the police against widespread calls for an independent inves- tigating authority wholly outside the force. Public confidence that the police can be trusted to investigate themselves is minimal. The PCA is now attempting the impossible manoeuvre of distancing itself from the police whilst remaining a fully-fledged part of it. The Crown Prosecution Service, es tablished in the mid-1980s to take over from Page 6
FEATURES
25 Giving 'law and order' a bad name Outside the law? Workers picket Jacob's Biscuits, Aintree the police the task of prosecuting defendants, has been wracked by its own crisis. Underfunded and under-staffed, its inefficiency has further undermined confidence in the legal procedures that lead to convictions. Inadequate preparation of cases frequently leads to long delays and numerous court appearances before cases get heard, sometimes resulting in charges being dismissed. This lack of confidence can only be exacerbated by the apparent implication of prosecution lawyers in recently exposed wrongful convictions.
With the discrediting of the forensic scientific establishment that secured the Maguire
John harris 2 convictions, even this pillar of the criminal justice procedure cannot not now escape scrutiny and criticism. become The courts have embroiled in a trauma of their own, particularly since the release of the Guildford Four. Traditionally they have been defended as independent and fair bastions of British democracy. But the exposure of one miscar- riage of justice after another - each of them only recognised by the courts in retrospect, very late in the day and under pressure - has underlined how comprehensive is the crisis of the criminal justice system. This entire system, reinforced in the court room by procedural rules and the judges, is geared towards the acceptance of police evidence as inherently more reliable than evidence from other sources. The Court of Appeal has shown itself incapable of rooting out even the most obvious miscarriages of jus- tice that result. The argument that to question for this, investigate malpractice, or even judges to be accountable, is to 'undermine the whole system' has been exposed as a cover SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
Black communities suffer police harrasment, and complain of inaction against racist violence
Mere not waiting for ever. for the community of interest between the courts and other law and order institutions.
But a price is now being paid. Confidence in the judiciary has dropped. The Lord Chief Justice has twice recently had to use major public speeches to defend the judiciary and rally morale.
There is disarray over the direction of sentencing policy. The Tories" traditional preference for deterrence and punishment as objectives are having to be reconciled with an urgent need to stem the crisis of overcrowding in the prisons. This particular square peg won't easily be fitted into a round hole.
There are proposals for a major overhaul of the probation service - shifting probation officers further towards enforcing punishment in the community. The seemingly progressive measure of 'electronic tagging' as a way of keeping offenders out of prison has been widely criticised by civil libertarians.
That the prison service is in crisis hardly needs stating. Years of law and order policies based on quasi- Victorian concepis of punishment have left Britain with the highest prison population per capita in Europe. Over-crowding is such that, quite apart from the dense packing of inmates in the ordinary prisons, up to one thousand are being kept in unsanitary, confined and inhuman conditions in police cells.
Although media attention is now focussed on the Woolf Inquiry, set up in the aftermath of the riots at Strangeways and other prisonsthe explosive concoction of elements that brought about those riots is continuously provoking smaller scale problems. The combination of this situation with the economic SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
FEATURES We demand action y
Keep blood
off Our Streetdustrial action as a means of resolving it. per cent). engaged in by masses of people - going to parties, attending football matches, hanging around on the street. causes of this situation and the reasons for its occurence now. The combination of recession and an austerity offensive that has slashed jobs and services, with the centralisation and massive strengthening of law enforcement institutions speaks for itself. The legitimacy of these institutions rested on a social consensus that
squeeze has had similar effects on prison of- lacks credibility. ficers as the police, though the Prison Officers Association have no qualms about using in- This scenario has developed against the background of a decade of crime and inner- city riots. Law and order policies to secure begun. property, personal safety and public order" have been main planks of Tory policy. Yet the crime rate is now at its worst since the Second World War. In recent years it has been rising at 4 per cent a year, with signs this year of a far greater increase (crime reported in the South East in the first quarter of 1990 is up 20 The govemment has exacerbated this by effectively criminalising forms of behaviour "The problems go deeper than Tory policy. That just acted as a catalyst. The archaic, class-based, racist character of these institutions are rooted in their history. The public debate about how to resolve the situation has therefore been difficult for the establishment." Socialists needn't look far to find the such attitudes lead?
Andrew Wiard/Report has been croded by the polarisation of the Thatcher years. With the underpinning strategy this polarisation no longer appearing so suc- cessful, the facade of authority has begun to crumble. However, the problems go deeper than Tory policy. That just acted as a catalyst. The archaic, class-based, racist character of these institutions are rooted in their history. The public debate about how to resolve the situation has therefore been difficult for the establishment. So far it has been dealt with by a combination of damage limitation and taking the question of reform on an issue by issue basis. But this The idea that corruption in the police, a crisis of confidence in the courts and mass prison riots can be addressed as discrete issues without an overall strategy won't sell for long. A broader debate is inevitable. Indeed it has For the Tories to admit failure and the need for a fundamental policy alteration in this area is unthinkable. But their policy of simply announcing "full steam ahead" (whilst engaging in behind the scenes U-tums, as on the economy) won't boost morale or satisfy the widespread calls for change. Another option is to strengthen the coer- cive state to resolve by force problems that are otherwise insoluble without mass support. This option has waited in the wings through the 1980s - to briefly emerge at Gibraltar and during the Stalker af- fair. Its main effect has been to divide the ruling class. With the party so rooted in in- stitutions under attack, the Tory focus is therefore on containment and damage limitation. A caravan of slow moving commissions of en- quiry has been established to give an impression of movement. Labour is now trying to outflank the goverment on the issue, hoping to ce- ment its image as a stable and trustworthy party of govemment. Unlike Home Secretary Waddington, Roy Hattersley was given a warm reception by the Police Federation con- ference - to whom he pledged support for all police demands on the goverment. So far this is restricted to financial issues. But where will Offering very little more than a bipartisan Page 7
Torles have helped bring the law into disrepute with their Poll Tax; but the TUC Is helping to uphold it
John Harris/FL
TUL
POLL approach, the Labour Party wants to sell itself on law and order ideology whilst dissociating itself from the aura of sleaze, secrecy and brutishness. Taking advantage of the move towards consumer-style marketing by police forces such as the Met, Labour is trying to develop a trendy image on the issue
Gone are the days when local Labour authorities boycotted police "consultative" committees, preferring to campaign for accountability and align themselves with those at the receiving end of the strong state. New realism and witch hunting have seen to that.
Labour is now taking the lead in calling for Page 8
EATURES F. SNUT GW TIGAN BRANCH TAILORS TUFF CARMENT WORKERS 3 *SCOW BEN inevitable
PAY NO POLI POLL a new 'community" approach centred on a "partnership" between the police and local authorities - with local business and voluntary organisations roped in to shore up the coalition. Of course councils are powerless and penniless, and police accountability is disap pearing even further over the horizon (given
moves towards centralising the class and state. police on a national basis). The approach will therefore be little more than a cosmetic exercise to rebuild public confidence in the system.
So far Labour has had precious little to say on the prison crisis or the loss of confidence in the judiciary. Although Hattersley has finally
needs to start now.
brought himself to express concern over the Birmingham Six - the Guildford Four, Winchester Three and Maguire Seven affairs elicited few calls for reform. A Labour com- mittee established to look at legal reforms by an incoming government rejected a call for the halting of con- victions based on uncorroborated confessions. And the party hasn't been prominent in defending jury trials or the right to silence. Thus the next election, occurring in the wake of this crisis of the criminal justice establishment, will feature the two main parties doing their best to avoid saying anything original about it. This vacuum helps to explain the re-emergence of the debate on a bill of rights and the relaunch of Charter 88. Roy Hat- tersley was accordingly moved to present his own package of constitu- tional reforms, and Labour has jumped the reluctantly On bandwagon in calling for the incor- poration of the European Conven- tion on Human Rights into British law. The Bill of Rights debate is broader than the scope of this ar- ticle. Suffice to note that this liberal (small "I) lobby has so far shown it- self totally disinclined to deal with the real problems outlined above. It has been conspicuously absent from campaigns by black and Irish prisoners, and issues of trade union rights; nor has it used their cases to call for significant changes. The police and the courts barely feature on its agenda. But in the absence of any alter- native strategy, this lobby will in- evitably be seen as a flagbearer for civil liberties and force the pace on the question just as Paddy Ashdown has on Hong Kong. Given its short- comings in practice this will leave the central issues untouched, ena- bling the state to stick on the elas- toplast and slowly reform itself out of the glare of public debate. Commentators in the mass media have been forced to recognise the depth of the problem. But none have been prepared to call for the radical transformation of the whole system that is required. Marxists have histori- cally had much to say on this, because of their understanding of the relationship between A socialist intervention into this crisis, even a debate, is thus long overdue. Hopefully this will be initiated with the proposed Socialist Movement-sponsored Democratic Rights Convention early next year. The work SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990