social rights.
A series of anti-trade union laws have reversed long-held workers' rights against employers, whilst the Criminal Justice Act criminalised a whole range of legitimate activities, as well as attacking the right to silence. At the same time it is also preparing to control what we read and see. But this cannot be carried out directly: popular issues are util ised as a smokescreen, issues such as sex and violence on TV and child pornography on the Internet which give censorship a legitimacy.
It is especially what we look at that is under attack. In the 1950s, and from the standpoint of a liberalisation of sexual and moral issues, it was mainly the written word which came under the scrutiny of the censors - Lady Chatterley's Lover and Last Exir so Brooklyn for example. Today the image is a much more potent form of communication, and it is film, TV and the In. ternet which now face the censor's cagle cyc.
Even if it were true that there is more violence today, which is a debatable point, there is no serious evidence that images or words are the cause.
Rather, increasingly violent Glm, TV and computer imagery is a symptom of the social and moral decay of late capitalist society, the effects of poverty, cuts in welfare, so-called "community care for the mentally ill, and the atomisation of society resulting from seventeen years of Tory rule.
Barbarism
Images are not to blame and bannine them will increase rather than undermine violence. In previous centuries violent and barbaric attacks were carried out without the aid of such images; today in some semi-developed countries where pornography and erotic images are banned for religious reasons, rape and sexual abuse and murder still exist.
Like rape in marriage and child abuse here ten years ago, they go unrecognised. But in countries with less harsh censorship laws there tends to be less sexual and violent crime.
In the face of increasing authori. tarianiam socialists should oppose censorship. The cutting of violence from films or of erotic images from the Internet will nave no impact ou real violence and real sexual attack, nor will it solve the social problems suffered by many today.
Quite the reverse, it will be used to further undermine our rights and liberties.
Once accepted, censorship will be used to increasingly curtail the rights of the oppressed - women, lesbians and gay men, black people, the disabled - and against the left and anvone who wants to change the status quo. Real violence and sexual anuse against women and children will be again swept under the carpet of moral hypocrisy.
In the United States the reversal of affirmative action for blacks and as well as attacks on a