WHAT were Toni Gorton's two articles on the police doing in Socialist Challenge? They could have been lifted straight out of the pages of the Morning Star or Tribune! Their whole tenor was one of uncritical support for the NCCL's reformist project of 'community control of the police. Instead of going along with this Toni should have pointed two things out.
First, and this is the ABC of Marxism, there is no such thing as the 'community'; Britain is a class society.
The problem with the police is not that they are accountable only to themselves: rather it is that they are only too accountable capitalists. The adoption of more aggressive taclics is aue not to the pernicious intiuence of American TV series, but to the determination of the ruling class to crush any signs of working class insubordination.
Second, the demand for community control is not one which has arisen from the class struggle, but has been raised by left councillors and Eurocommunist intellectuals. the imagination can it be equated with the marxist demand for a workers militia.
If implemented it would result merely in anther committee for councillors to sit on. At best it would be ineffectual, at worst it would involve the labour movement in the planning of police operations, as unpaid advisors.
It is true that at the end of the first article Toni writes; 'In the final analysis the police are anti-working class and anti-black and anti-labour and nothing can prettify this ugly picture'. Unfortunately no conclusions are drawn from this, not even a hint is given that working people, if they are to take control over their own lives, must close down the existing police force and replace it with a new body which will defend working class interests, ie a workers' militia.
I trust that in future Socialist Challenge will not pursue its dialogue with the Benn current by adopting its policies.
DERRICK HIBBET North London to the By no stretch of months in retrospect in the political wilderness for the truth of the facts OT HITO TO be driven unquestionably the SWP is in decline, and in isolation from the pulse of the labour OVOMGH CrmCO VILi a polemic purism which almost matches the elitism of the RCP tionalists and Stalinists calling themselves the 'Non-Aligned Movement?
article what? Geographical proximity? The events of 1833? Strange arguments for Marxists...
we must use every opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of Thatcher's case, incuding as the article does, the plight themselves, outnumbered two to one by servicemen. But neither are the islands 'Argentinian' from any socialist criteria belong invasion at some point. I sincerely hope not!
Birmingham