24.10.1996

Big two jump on populist bandwagon

Conservative and Labour both claim the moral high ground - while preparing to hit the working class

Labour and Tory alike are now in full election swing. As a result, their attempts to square their support for a socially, morally and economically bankrupt system with people’s real concerns have been quite nauseating.

Philip Lawrence’s wife, the Snowdrop campaign and the Catholic Church have all entered the fray in the attempt to solve the problems of a rancid society. The worries of Snowdrop and Mrs Lawrence are heartfelt, given the terrible grief they have suffered. So too in their own way are those of the Catholic Church.

It is important to remember though the hypocrisy at the centre of the church establishment, if not its lay members. Only recently we have had the exposure of catholic priests preaching bourgeois sexual and family morality - while following their own sexual drives, abusing women and throwing single mothers into poverty and the fringes of society. We have seen too the preaching of the importance of the bourgeois-directed family against homosexuals, while homosexual priests hide in the closet.

The Catholic Church has recently published a document on morality. It has been seized on by Labour because it speaks out against poverty and recognises the need for some form of minimum wage. It has been seized on by the Tories, who claim only they can safeguard the morality of society.

The thought of the Catholic Church guiding our morality should put the fear of reaction and hypocrisy into us all. The church, both the protestant and catholic variety, has long been used by the ruling class to impose its economic and social control over the masses. This has taken all sorts of forms as society has developed, but control it is - whether exercised through the preaching of piety, the meek shall inherit the earth, the sanctity of marriage and the family, the sin of adultery and homosexuality: the lord god made us all, so you had better do as the church says.

Mrs Lawrence and the Snowdrop campaign are undoubtedly more honest, though limited and powerless. Faced by a violent society that seems to be running out of control, these people spontaneously turn to an outside force - ie, the state - to impose control. Unfortunately it is precisely the capitalist state that is the problem. With the working class effectively wiped off the political map, the population as a whole cannot envisage taking power into their own hands to reverse the decay that envelops society. By doing that we could create a human morality that begins from the needs of human beings, not the needs of an alien economic system and its state.

In fact any social agenda has been lacking from all the bourgeois discourse, not only of the Labour and Tory Parties, but also in the media. The ‘ban guns’ response to Dunblane is so obviously totally useless to solve the real problems in society that it is incredible how readily it is being grabbed by the whole of society. Mrs Lawrence wants to go further and ban knives - logical from her point of view, since her husband was stabbed to death.

Nevertheless it does not require a wild visionary to point out that violence in society does not result from inanimate objects, but from individuals so alienated or psychologically disturbed that they have become either desperate or actually mentally ill. These people are sick. Take away their gun and their drive to express themselves violently will not go away. They will try to find other means.

The ‘ban guns’ consensus indicates how far to the right society has moved. The capitalist parties are taking every advantage of this to jump on an authoritarian, populist bandwagon that poses as morality, but which is in reality deeply retrogressive and immoral.

Both Labour and Tory have been busily rewriting their election soundbites to take full advantage of Mrs Lawrence’s campaign, Snowdrop and the Catholic Church. We were dished a little aperitif already this week, as the Tories linked to these campaigns all their nasty, authoritarian measures in the queen’s speech for the last session of parliament before the election.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, ‘prison works’, Howard tells us. Crime will be solved for the first time in the whole history of capitalism by locking more people up for longer, as if this had not been tried before. Alienated youth will be wiped off the sociological map by more discipline at school. Poverty-stricken low paid and unemployed workers will be erased from memory by clamping down on ‘benefit fraud’.

Capitalism is pretty unambiguous now in its campaign to solve the problems of poverty and a population which - lacking power or hope of any kind of future - lashes out at society itself by pointing the police and the state at it.

The anger of people is understandable. The tragedy at the moment is that so often this takes negative, destructive forms. We should not underestimate the capacity of the bourgeoisie to meet this anger with even more destructive means. It has the full force of the armed state behind it and has signalled its intention to use it more and more.

The only way out of this escalating decay and violence is to provide positive solutions. This must come from the working class, organised for itself, for a completely new society based on human need. We are the only force that can liberate the whole of humanity since, unlike the ruling class, we are the slaves of this society not its beneficiaries. The liberating agenda of the working class has been sorely marginalised in recent years. All socialists, communists and militants must reassert that agenda with vigour and avoid any temptation to be dragged into the authoritarian populist programme.

We can understand the motivations of ordinary people without leading them into the hands of the capitalist state - a sure way to intensify our misery.

Helen Ellis