'law and Order' Whitelaw Style

Scan page 8

.The movie Scum is now on general release. It is about the life of inmates and officers of the Borstal system.

• The film was originally commissioned by the BBC's Play for Today department.

This • decision was later reversed from above by the BBC Director General (and therelore the state's media-censorship machine) wher the play was eventually completed.

The resultant produci was decided to be "too much" for our TV screens, and was chopped.

The makers were forced to take a choice of either scrapping the movie, or reproducing it for the cinema, where it would be an X certificate, and lose the young school-leaver and 'juvenile delinquent' audience it was aimed at.

The plot is indeed interesting for its relevance to conditions faced by the younger generations of today, and to the activițies of the repressive forces of the state.

Three working inmates class enter the Borstal various for offences.

Insults

Two are first offenders (car thefts, etc) while one is a hardened, tough youth who is put in there for beating up a prison officer.

As soon as they leave the car they face a barrage of insults, and physical harassment.

They are thrown from wall to wall, punched and subjected to verbal threats of further intimidation.

The officers pick out Carlin,| the hardest youth, and put most hassle on him.

He is told he will be "broken"

Then they are forced to run to their quarters. The black youth Angel is told the inmates don't like "jungle bunnies' and is put in his own cell.

This happens to the other small and frail youth who, being white is at least spared the racism.

Carlin is placed into dormitory where he is to "sorted out' Next morning, the routine day-to-day life inside the Borstal begins.

The general para-military marching, screaming and drilling continues to break down any initial resistance.

The attempt to make youth stop thinking and automatically obey commands is necessary to run these types of institutions.

The Borstal is run on the collaboration of the inmates' leaders with the 'Big Brother' Governor, who heads the hierarchy of screws.

'Daddies'

Next: are the house-mas ters, followed by the wing hr pads, who are the ex-cop t ype.

The inmates are kept in line by their 'daddies'.

These are the hardest and most brutal inmates in the wings.

They, with their props, help control cigarettes, sex, food, money-in fact the whole lives of the inmates.

The "daddy" is used as an agent of the Borstal screw hierarchy to control the hatred of the individual inmates.

Carlini poses this threat to the "daddy" , who, helped by his two props, beats up Carlin in the night.

The problem is that Carlin is not scared away from taking over-as are the other new inmates.

Angel is attacked and beaten At once and by arrangement the wing officer enters the cell: After several racist insults Angel is put on report for having a 'dirty cell'!

He is screamed at and intimidated not as a person but as a number.

Put on report

The other new inmate is asked to borrow' a radio by the 'daddy'. He cannot refuse-but is promptly put on report by the screw for having stolen a radio!

However Cárlin decides to retaliate to these provocative attacks. He chooses his time before looking for revenge. -Then he finds the 'daddy's' thug friend.

Placing two billiard balls into a sock he cracks them over the thug's head.

Meanwhile the youth in the social room continue to play pool or sit around demoralised and depressed.

They appear not to notice anything as Carlin smoothly walks away, leaving the thug collapsed on the floor.

This is the most amazing scene of pure violence and the shot shudders even the toughest audience.

Carlin repeats this vicious treatment on the daddy. It is worth describing these events to illustrate the cold-blooded nature of the violence that takes place.

Blank silence

He approaches him from behind, and breaks his head into Whitelaw a SInK, kicking and punching him below the belt.

The result is blood everywhere and a near-dead 'daddy" who cannot move.

Then ironically the film's comedy comes out. Wanting to pin the blame on Carlin, the screws receive a blank silence from the props, who both claim to have "fallen" while the youth in the pool room "saw nothing"

A new leadership has been established. The consequences are both good and bad.

At the realisation of the new balance of forces the screws pull Carlin into the system.

Now he is in charge, he receives perks and power-but in return for his active cooperation.

Only as long as he remains on top will he maintain his post.

In this way the system itself selects the most lumpen and vicious youth as its chosen agents of control;

The film also development of the divide and rule strategy in progress.

The boys are separated in basket ball into blacks and whites.

Then they are allowed to release: their frustration. and anger against one another...

This acts as a safety valve for the inmates and weakens the youth by reinforcing backward racial prejudices.

Individualists

The system also contains those individualists who want no trouble off the "daddies"

Archer is an example of this.

His atheism and vegetarianism cause endless problems for the screws.

However, though he has courage and intelligence he refuses to take up any struggle to destroy the elitist daddy system.

He appears to be the mouthpiece of the film makers, representing a statement that individual resistance can live on while the prison system itself breeds, rather than stops hardened crime.

This message is basically the aim of the movie.

However the pressures and strain of life under the daily military regime-both physically and psychologically-drive some beyond the brink.

One youth commits sucide by slashing his wrists.

Another youth commits suicide after being raped. The climax is reached when the inmates rebel at dinner time. Music is used to help build up the tension.

Short-lived

All hell breaks loose, though the screws escape the good kicking they deserve. Triumphantly the youth dance around the hall.

But victory is short-lived, and the screws reform en masse.

The ring leaders are given the most horrific beatings and "order" is restored.

The movie thus sharply exposes the prison system and clearly raises some embarassing questions.

In particular it shows the meaning of pledges by Tory is at present on general release.

Home Secretary Whitelaw to introduce a new "short sharp shock" for youth.

For all the brutality this will unleash against youth, the film shows how such treatment cannot eradicate, merely strengthen criminal tendencies.

The capitalist system, now forced to destroy existing forces of production and create mass unemployment is incapable of developing or utilising the potential skills of working class youth, or fulfilling their needs.

When youth respond in frustration they are then met by the most savage repression.

Nor is it any accident that the most reactionary elements of sadistic cruelty (such as NF and UDR) are strongly represented in the ranks of prison screws.

The prison service also has its own internal SPG-style elite forçe of thugs which has been used increasingly over the last year.

Most recently they were used against a peaceful sit-in at Wormwood Scrubs.

* Screws from all over the city attacked and beat up the 50 occupiers (particularly the Irish republicans).

Connection

Similar brutal attacks have occurred at Hull, Brixton, Lewes, Gartree and other prisons.

As socialists we see the connection between increased attacks by the Thatcherite Tories against jobs, social services and wages and the build up and strengthening of these forces of state repression.

To us, the task must be to channel the anger, hatred, and anti-establishment resistance into a mass communist youth movement which can remove the Labour traitors and mobilise the working class to smash the repressive capitalist state machinery. This is the vital first .tü..i!....

step to creating a classless socialist society.

But whatever you do, see this film. It shows the way rigid censorship has helped to create the false image of prisons as soft, lukewarm and ludicrous as the "Porridge" TV series.

Scan page 9

While we have political differences with the author of this letter we reprint it here as an act of solidarity with the anti-Somoza prisoners held in Nicaragua. ner.

This is an extract from a letter smuggled out of the H Blocks of Long Kesh, Britain's most modern torture centre, in which over 370 Irish republican prisoners of war suffer intolerable conditions similar to the sewer pipe dwellings of Calcutta spoken of by Cardinal O'Fiach, because they refuse to compromise their principles and bow to Britain's criminalisation policy.

"My cell is my whole world 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, in this 8 x 10 concrete tomb, containing nothing only a stinking, overtlowing poe, a piece of stinking foam for a mattress and three dirty rags for blankets.

I see no-one except the screws, who open and close my door.

I am denied exercise and I am aeniea exercise ana paper, the right to associate with my comrades, my thoughts are my only companions.

I can't even see the birds or the sky as my window has been blocked with a steel grill of frosted perspex, cutting off whatever little view of the outside world that I had and stemming the flow of air to a trickle.

My cell reeks of urine and human excreta, which covers the four walls and a pile of inedible food in the corner, a rotting haven for maggots and flies which torture me day in, day out.

My hair and beard is long and matted and my body filthy and covered with sores.

I am constantly hungry and sickness is always at hand. I am refused medical attention because I refuse to wear the prison garb to see the doctor.

It's two years now since I've read a book, looked at a paper, watched TV or smoked a cigarette. tobacco is denied to me...

At least twice a week I undergo a special mirror search designed to humiliate and dehumanise.

At least twice a week I'm forced to straddle over a mirror, naked, then I am punched, kicked and pulled beard until i am made to squat over the mirror, then my buttocks are parted, at times my insides have been probed.

I am denied the very basic human rights, at times I think even death would be preferable to these conditions."

«The blanket men in H Block suffer these conditions in the name of British Justice and Peace.

Can these men be allowed to suffer? How long can the H Blocks-a monument to British rule and brutality-be allowed " to Help the blanket men пер unle Dianket men ifferences with the author r with the anti-Somoza p He is in prison today because he doesn't totally agree with the before anóther yet Republican POW dies, which will inevitably come.

Please copy this letter as many times as possible, send it to,friends and relatives, let the world know of the plight of the blanket men in the H Blocks of Long Kesh and help smash the H Blocks!"

Signed Matthew Lundy became popular in the oriental market of Managua due to the