Letters
Age of innocence?
One wonders if there is really any point commenting further. Sandy Johnstone and John Walsh (Letters Weekly Worker October 15 and October 22) are now in a cosy, consensual, judgmental, moralistic huddle, having worked out just who can and cannot have sex. When all the verbiage is taken away, they are agreed.
John Walsh, while stating that he is in favour of the CPGB’s position for abolition of the age of consent, actually tells us any 13-year-old who is interested in sex with a mature man must be socially disturbed. What is this based upon? Wild bigotry and prejudice, nothing more. He tells us a mature man who fancies a 13-year-old is likewise socially disturbed and whether any sex between them is abuse or not will be decided by a jury. The bloke must have broken some law, if he is to be charged and taken to court and go before a jury.
So how is any of this different from Johnstone’s position? Between the two of them they suggest sex laws and legislation far less progressive than those that exist in some European bourgeois states currently. Walsh actually proposes marriage laws more restrictive than those already operating in England, and far more restrictive than those currently in law in Scotland. One wonders what gives him the audacity to propose that two people of 16, for example, should not be able to marry - even if the parents agree!
Walsh says I quote Islamic practice to justify my positions. Did he miss the last correspondence? It was Johnstone who brought in the question of Islamic countries, citing reactionary barbarous regimes with low age-of-consent laws to demonstrate how this proves them to be abusive, not liberating. Walsh will think this prurient again, but you really cannot talk about ages of consent and abuse without talking about sexual behaviour - sorry that it insults your sensitivities. The whole point of ritual mutilation of young females in these countries is to prevent them enjoying sex. Female circumcision of the clitoris is done precisely for reasons of suppressing female sexuality. So the age of consent, no matter how low in these countries, is never meant to be sexually liberating for anyone, let alone the hapless girls.
Just to be consistent, and while god is still whispering in his ear as to what is just and sound and what is suitable for the psychiatrist and medical attention, Walsh adds that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised to 14. Well, you cannot very well argue that a 13-year-old is incapable of true consent to have sex with an older man, if you likewise argue that a 13-year-old girl or girls are capable of fully consenting to murder, or robbery with violence, for example. The truth is - and I will make this my final point on the issue - 11 to 13-year-olds are fully capable of consenting to sex with anyone they want to, without being in need of treatment or being destined for the mad house. Sadly, they are also quite capable of fully consenting to capital crimes, including murder, at least as clearly as any other section of the community.
Whatever Johnstone and Walsh say, sex will continue to take place across the age gap from time to time. Sometimes a full, ongoing, long-lasting relationship will also, rarely but genuinely, occur. You can spit self-righteous rubbish all day long, and try and elongate some kind of age of sexual innocence where Bambi-like creatures pass into early adolescence, blissfully unaware of what their sex organs are for, or operating a strict no-touch rule on anyone not of their own age, but that will never be the reality. It just means people like you remain part of the repressive, bigoted problem, not part of a liberating solution.
Frank Worth
Leeds
Dover, Alabama
They are “parasites” who milk the welfare system, shoplift, pick-pocket, hang around insulting women and run brothels. No, these are not crude lies about Jews from the pages of Adolf Hitler’s Der Stürmer in the 1930s; they are crude lies about Roma and Kosovan asylum-seekers from recent issues of the Dover Express.
Ever since last year, when the first Roma refugees arrived in Dover fleeing persecution, there has been a nasty undercurrent of racism in the town. Local resentment against the asylum-seekers was encouraged by the government when it labelled them “bogus” and dragged its heels over providing extra funding for the area.
When the neo-Nazis of the National Front tried to exploit the situation with marches in November 1997 and February 1998, anti-fascists mobilised to stop them.
In the last few weeks, however, the bigots have gone back on the offensive, following the arrival of refugees fleeing Kosova. At the beginning of October the Dover Express bracketed asylum-seekers together with bootleggers and drug-traffickers as “human sewage”.
On Monday October 19 members of Dover Residents Against Racism (DRAR) met to discuss the rising level of hostility towards asylum-seekers. As one member of DRAR put it, “It’s starting to feel like Montgomery, Alabama down here”.
Aylum-seekers have had their windows smashed. In the last such attack, the attackers left a sign painted with the words, “We will burn you out”. One of the addresses attacked had been printed in full by the Daily Mail (October 6).
DRAR is convinced that the Dover Express bears a large share of responsibility for what is happening. The latest editorial (October 22) says that the majority of local people are not racist, but there is resentment against asylum-seekers which cannot be ignored. The paper says that Dover could become like Marseilles, a stronghold of the Front National. And the paper reports that Paul James (a local builder whose racist statements were previously given great prominence in the Express) aims to be a local candidate for the British National Party. James also says that he will refuse to do building work for anyone who supports the asylum seekers.
DRAR is urgently trying to arrange a meeting with the editors of the Dover Express and the East Kent Mercury, along with representatives of the Migrant Helpline and Refugee Link. Also Kent Anti-Fascist Action has sent a letter to the Express answering the racists point for point.
DRAR has been out leafleting in the Westbury Road area of Dover. This brought one letter offering help and a lot of hate-mail. Much of the latter argued that DRAR was an ‘outside organisation’ because the PO box used on the leaflet (belonging to Refugee Link) is in Folkestone - the next town down the coast!
DRAR will continue to meet on a monthly basis. If matters continue as they are now, someone may even be killed. The fascists are weak and poorly organised. Nevertheless, they could well have an influence out of all proportion to their size.
A Folkestone contact reports that one of her workmates has got involved with a Dover woman who is holding meetings to “organise a march to London” against asylum-seekers. She was apparently thrown out by her husband and had to go to the council to get rehoused; she is now blaming the asylum-seekers for all her problems. The anti-asylum-seeker stories which this woman is coming out with are drawn word for word from the pages of the Dover Express.
Local anti-racists are organising to confront head-on the Nazis and bigots; they are the real “human sewage”.
Dover Residents Against Racism
Folkestone, Kent
Demand justice
Since October 16, when Pinochet was arrested, there has been a daily and noisy non-stop picket at the London Clinic. Thousands have come to picket - from Latin America, Belgium, France, Spain, Switzerland and other European countries.
Our committee is actively supporting that picket. We want the most severe punishment not just for Pinochet, but also for all his collaborators - especially the top level ones in the UK, Latin America, Europe and US. The bloody 1973 coup was carried out with Nato assistance. British-made planes bombed Allende’s government palace. More than 400 US ‘advisers’ prepared the way for the overthrow of the elected Allende government and later helped the dictatorship to capture, torture and ‘disappear’ tens of thousands. Now, Thatcher has revealed just how close she is to Pinochet.
Workers and progressives want Pinochet put to justice. Many also want to see the same happen to the Peruvian generals who are responsible for the ‘dirty war’ which killed more than 30,000; to the Argentinean, Brazilian and Uruguayan juntas; to General Bánzer of Bolivia. And so on.
However, we do not have any trust in the Spanish and British courts. While attacking a far-right autocrat, they are preparing the ground to also condemn leftwing fighters accused of killing other European citizens. In this New World Order the imperialist powers want to violate the national sovereignty of the oppressed nations under a ‘democratic’ cover.
The Chilean government, president Menem, the archbishop of Canterbury and the Tories are demanding Pinochet’s freedom. The Daily Telegraph is even expressing its sympathies for this mass murderer, saying that his economic miracle would not have been possible without “breaking legs”.
The Chilean left is mainly divided between those supporters of the coalition government who are also demanding that Pinochet should be released on the grounds of his ‘diplomatic immunity’ and those who are expressing support for the Spanish courts. The problem is they are allowing the right and Pinochet to become a martyr of the ‘fatherland’ against imperialism.
We are against Pinochet’s release and we should fight against Blair’s attempt to find a negotiated compromise. We should have no faith in the imperialist ‘justice’ which imposed Suharto, Mobutu, Somoza and other criminals in order to smash the left - and who would accept a British Pinochet if necessary in order to crush a revolutionary movement.
Bolivian Union Solidarity Committee
London