Workers in uniform?
Chatting at the SP branch meeting on Thursday, we discussed the concept of whether or not members of the police, prison guards or armed forces were workers in uniform, to be won over. This is quite an issue within the SP at the moment because Brian Caton, GS of the Prison Officers Association resigned from Labour to join them. There’s an excellent interview with the man himself here.
The Prison Officers’ Association is in dispute with Labour over the right to strike. The government is attempting to force “modernisation” (privatisation, massive reduction of wages by lowering the amount prison officers earn upon recruitment and so forth) upon prisons – both prison officers and inmates alike – without any respect for the wishes of the POA and the people it represents.
If we agree with Marx and Engels that the nature of all being is process, that nothing can be understood except in the context of its becoming and ceasing to be, we need to consider the processes at work with prison officers, policemen and soldiers. There is proletarianization: the continuous retrenchment by the ruling class, uniting workers in their self interest. There is also bourgeoisification, whereby according to differering pay scales, workers are separated from one another in their material interests, and their opposition to bosses lessened by better treatment.
One argument is that, because these professional arms of the State are better paid and better treated than the mass of the working class, they will be unlikely converts to socialism. Yet I think it is indisputable that they remain workers, subject to the vicissitudes of the system of wage labour. While they might be used against the organised working class and its associated protest movement (Orgreave, Wapping, London 2009), they evidently feel the same pressures as the rest of the working class.
Police in this country have a long history of industrial struggle, and the prison officers are now showing great initiative in demanding the right to strike. Such opposition has this evoked within the State that the POA felt moved to propose a one-day general strike to the Trades Union Congress this year. Whilst being defeated, it should dispel the notion that the armed forces of the State must necessarily be the most backward elements of the working class.
Now there’s an example from the United States which, I think, confirms my view: a Republican city councillor in Macon, GA, has proclaimed that he will demand the abolition of the city police department if they vote to unionize. The local cops got in touch with the Teamsters’ Law Enforcement League about establishing a chapter of that professional labour organization – which would be the first in Georgia. This demonstrates quite clearly the competing class interests at stake.
Personally I think this is a great opportunity for the labour movement.
In almost every instance of successful political struggle waged through the streets, winning over elements of the “armed body of men” which essentially underpin the State is vital. Whether Russian soldiers who refused to open fire on protesters in February 1917 or whether its the fraternization between army and El Frente Nacional de la Resistencia which might finally result in Manuel Zelaya’s return to power in Honduras, the weapon-bearing arms of the State are a crucial strategic part of the working class.
When they enter struggle with the ruling class, support from the rest of the working class provides an opportunity for the sort of fraternization and building of good relations which we, as socialists, need and want to occur.
I have to say that’s an excellent post. Would also be good to see if anything can be drawn from the de-unionisation of the police that occurred in 1919? A force that is unionised would I expect be less inclined to act as agents of the state but more as servants of the people.
I definitely agree with this, Dave. I’ve never understood why some of us consider the police and armed forces less working class than other state employees. Unionise the army!
completely agree with the post and comments. I’ve heard 2 main arguments against recently.
firstly, that ‘workers in uniform’ become ‘bourgeois cops’ due to the conditions of work and life. Obviously, better pay and conditions helps the process along, but also the psychological need to assume criminality of large layers of the working class, in order to justify the acts of the arms of the state. The second argument would be, flowing from the first, ‘workers in uniform’ pose a threat to the workers movement – both directly, in terms of agent provocateurs and outright victimisation of workers and their organisation and by our association with militant layers of the police, prison officers etc, the image of the left can be tarnished to layers of workers and youth, angry about police brutality and the grim realities of the prison system.
personally i think both arguments are perfectly valid, but wrong. The political situation we as socialists find ourselves in screams for fresh and balanced analysis. As situations begin to open up, i think its natural that one mans opportunity will be anothers reason to stand back. Personally I’d rather socialists were able to play a role within the POA, than were left wringing clean hands from outside it.
I think the main reason that the police are often considered to be less working class than other state employees is their history of hitting the working class with big sticks and riding horses at them.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t, objectively speaking, because they are, but I just thought I should state the obvious…….
….and you can only get people to hit others with big sticks in a professional capacity if you can somehow separate them from those they’re hitting. As Paul said really.
Arse! You’ve beaten me to it – we had a very similar discussion at our branch on Thursday too. Report to emerge (eventually).
Sorry, was going to say something about hegemonic processes re: police the other day but the phone went and I had to go and deal with something, and never made it back.
The moment’s gone now, though I may pick it up in a post.
The POA – like the police the other year – may be in dispute with the government, and doing the rounds of TUC and labour movement events, but their conflict remains exclusively economic. We can hope that, through struggle for better terms, their perspective on the role of the criminal justice system develops in a progressive way, encompassing the legitimate demands of prisoners and others in the sector, and challenging the role of the state in general. But this would require government action that provokes such a change of mindset – as with the example you refer to in the US, where the issue of politics emerges only in reaction to threats of open warfare by the authorities. Yet the British government is very good at ensuring its props are well-mollified when threatened with a real loss of obedience.
In the UK at the moment, moreover, there is nothing inherently radical about the POA’s demands: no proposed change in conditions for people detained in prisons or detention centres, no change in the relationship between prisoners and those who guard them. It can and probably will be settled without any substantive shift in the outlook of the union. While the prison officers are undoubtedly ‘workers’, and such ‘workers in uniform’ consistently play pivotal roles in historical incidents of class struggle (for better or worse), in a non-revolutionary situation with a low understanding of socialist politics even amongst the more militant sections of the workforce, what progressive role can such ‘workers’ play?
By entering the prison service you inherit the traditions and practices of the profession – and there is very little in the way of an effective counterweight to this tradition. I appreciate that we can’t dismiss groups of workers like the prison officers, but equally I am not prepared to overlook their obvious role in meting out state violence to ordinary people. The uniform matters more.
As an aside, I must say I cringed at seeing the Northern Irish Prison Officers’ Association brass band being invited to play in this year’s Tolpuddle trade union march…
I suppose a point that can be made is that we, as socialists, co-operating with workers on their own economic interest, can hope to win those workers around to our views – particularly with regard to the role of the State and the role of the prison service, the police and so on within as arms of that State.