THE HYPOCRISY of the new 'moral crusade' and law and order hysteria whipped up by the Tory government is nothing new: John Major's first illater Pack to Racice ceam bit the dust a couple of years ago.
But what is really disgusting is the way Tony Blair's Labour Party has turned the issue into a bi-partisan exercise, in which each attempts to outbid the other's reactionary proposals.
17 years of Thatcherism have created the classic polarised society in which millions ir the bottom third of the population have been stripped of dignity and hone reduced to abject and hopeless poverty and alienation, and in the process triggered a crime wave.
Now the party of sleaze are now eagerly mounting the reactionary law and order bandwagon, and joining the hypocritical, hyped-up calls for a moral crusade'. Of course this is aimed not at the anti-social behaviour of big-time City swindlers and profiteers, but at individual explosions of violence and ill-discipline by deprived sections of working class youth.
The new preoccupation with morals dovetailed neatly Into the stock. reactionary rhetoric of the Tory conference. Ministers pushed all the populist buttons, with calls for workfare, crackdowns on social security fraud, new pow ers to sue strikers, and hints that the London Underground and Royal Mail could be privatised.
The subsequent Queen's Speech embraced a more limited but again largely populist agenda, with gun controls and laws against easy targets like paedophiles, while Michael Howard pledges even longer lal sentences and a bottomless budget to build new prisons.
Exploiting the media hype which propelled the Dunblane parents and Francis Lawrence to centre stage, all manner of brutal and reactionary nostrums have been promoted.
Gillian Shephard apparently has wide Tory support for her belief that youth can be beaten into submission with a return to caning. An opinion poll claims majority support for electronic tagging, to impose strict curfews on young people.
Parents will be required to sign contracts to get their children into school - while the NAS/UWT campaigns to have ever larger numbers expelled.
But the backlash reaches beyond law and order. Catholic bishops castigate Tony Blair for not condemning abortion.
All this has visibly shifted so. cial policy to the right. But will it win the Tories the election? By harping on the moral discord after 17 years in power, the Tories are undermining any sensation or a tee good tactor among key middle class supporters.
Opinion polls suggest that Tony Blair, by shamelessly matching and trumping Tory John Major repressive proposals blow for blow, has actually increased his canes or police batons, or borWing them with two-faced serlead as a result or the mora mons on abstract morality, the crusade. who will win? Blair may well get in. but widening gulf created by Tory social engineering and ecoWhile a growing reactionary nomic policy can only be consensus looks for ways to bridged by far-reaching socialist restrain and repress the grow- policies - precisely the policies ing frustrations of the most de- which lony Blair has most firmly rejected. prived layers of society, whether by beating them with Denis Healey - the former chancellor whose policies triggered massive demonstrations against the last Labour govern ment 20 years ago this month - is right: if Labour wins and opts for the cuts needed to implement Maastricht, there could be riots against Blair. And the left needs to ensure it is in a position to lead that revolt
Socialist Outlook 110 • November 9 1996.
RHING ERIES HIt ACTION CHUP