Tory Law Is Class Law

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ni man a n nun, ernid masr dn nerin ni Amidst the massive battery of attacks on the working class opened up by the Tories riding on the back of the betrayals of the last Labour government, the use of the law against workers has risen rapidly in significance.

Of course, the use of the "law' by the ruling class is not by any means new. As the law makers they have always been in a position to do so.

Thus, throughout much of the 19th century trade unions as we now know them were illegal, and militants like the famous Tolpuddle Martyrs constantly faced the threat of jail or deportation if they tried to organise.

In County Durham throughout the 1850s and '60s the police fought a running battle against the attempt by miners to organise in unions.

Baton charges

Secret night meetings held out in the fields were broken up by baton charges; houses were raided and families evicted to keep up the general air of intimidation.

Even the subsequent recognition of trade unions by the government and the employers following a series of' open riots and bombings in the mid1860s in Sheffield, Durham and London did not really change this. . The decision to give certain legał immunites to the trade 11. - ] -unions reflected not any acceptance of working class rights, but rather the decision by the ruling class to 'deal' differently with trade unionists, or more particularly with their leaders.

When this new strategy of using the union burcaucrats as intermediaries failed, however, it was a case of back to the boot, the cosh and the bayonet.

in 1900 ine 1 al Ant dha Tast Tlala ..daa vale Juagement wiped out at a stroke the rights previously won by strikers.

In 1911 transport workers in Liverpool were shot down for organising mass p rickets by armed police.

We get a pictu re of this reforming' period from the work of E.J. Allen.

Writing in 1910 he points out:

66ldl a learna hand •we nave naa l Vale denicione and Acharrno indro ments from their law courts; so much for the state as an administrator of justice. The army has been used against strikers Featherstone, Mold and Belfast; so much for impartiality in these cases. During the strike at Hull and Grimsby, gunboats were there to show how the navy is to be used when capitalist interests are threatened.

Outlawed

In fact, the ruling class has always been ready for any excuse to outlaw strikes and trade union action, even at times when they were also drawing. the trade union leadership increasingly into the state.

In 1915 the Munitions of War Act effectively made strikes illegal and by 1916 had been extended to all industries.

Similarly, in 1940 the Conditions of Employment and Arbitration Order (Order 1305) was used, with the assistance of the Labour and trade union leaders, to outlaw industrial action.

Thus, in 1942, three miners leaders from Betteshanger Colliery in Kent were jailed and a further 1,000 threatened with jail for non-payment of fines imposed for taking illegal strike action.

Again, in 1944, Trotskyists on lyneside were put on trial and eventually jailed for defending the right of shipyard workers to take strike action, regardless of the needs of the imperialist war, against their own ruling class.

Labour government Such 'temporary' wartime measures were kept as long as possible. Order 1305 was last used by the then Labour government) in 1951 against militant dockers on Merseyside who found themselves charged with incitement' to cause strikes! Stripped of the verbiage, otrilool Ctrinnad of tha verhiane their crime was to be militant, effective trade unionists.

The period since the mid 1960s should therefore be seen in the context of this long history of state repression of the working class.

At the same time, however, the sharpness and rapidity of recent developments should be seen in the light of the massive economic crisis facing capitalism anu le maomy or empiuyers nod tha inhility of amalaudan to drive in their nrofite. and Țd ayan „L prop up ailing British imperialism without physically smashing the working class as an organised force.

Since the late 1960s the attention of the bourgeoisie, and its servants in parliament has been firmly focussed on the use of the state against the working class.

The introduction of British troops into Ireland to break the nationalist population went hand in hand with attacks on the trade unions.

'Wilson's 'In Place of Strife' was followed by Heath's Industrial Relations Act and the creation of an 'Industrial Relations' Court to discipline workers.

Conspiracy laws

Since then, the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the use of conspiracy laws against pickets as in the trial of the Shrewsbury Two, the use of SUS laws against youth and of police and the SPG against strikers and pickets, notably at Grunwicks, have created a framework of direct state suppression to be liberally used against militants.

As the trials of anti-fascists at Southall and Leicester in 1979 showed, in the eyes of the state and its courts, mere presence at a demonstration which challenges, however slightly, the authority of the bourgeoisie, is sufficient for a conviction.

Taken together, these things testify to the shift towards the use of the state apparatusarmy, police and courts-to tackle an undefeated working class.

It is important, therefore, to get this idea of 'the law' firmly into perspective.

Just what is 'the law'? Whose 'order' does the much vaunted "law and order' defend? How did that order come about?

The British bourgeoisie are usually reticent about their own origins. While perpetuating the myths of the typical British compromise' gradual change and fair play' they conveniently ignore the fact that the real ending of the old feudal order of the middle ages was a result not of some cosy Parliamentary compromise cooked up over tea, but of the military defeat of the Crown and aristocracy by Cromwell's bourgeois forces.

This was, of course, subsequently made both definitive and "legal' by lopping off the King's head in 1649.

The deals and compromises came only after this decisive victory for the new, emerging bourgeois class.

In practice capitalism only compromises when it is to its own material advantage.

For bankrupt capitalism in crisis there is no room for such compromise.

Class warfare

What we have, instead, is a move towards open class warfare-class against class-where the central aim of the ruling bourgeoisie is to smash and atomise the working class as an organised social force. • To do this, it uses the state -in the marxist sense of 'bodies of armed men'-as a weapon against the working class.

And in the background, as in countries like Turkey, stands the mailed fist of capitalism in crisis-fascism.

Only after the material defeat of the working class and the smashing of its organisations will they stop to sift the remains to see who can be 'dealt' with to restore the air of 'legitimacy' and gentlemanly co-operation!

Contrary to the opinions sometimes expressed by judges from beneath their wigs the law is neither god-given nor eternal.

It is made by men and more particularly by men acting as part of the ruling class in society.

The law is, therefore, no more than an organised expression of the interests of the ruling class of the time. That is why the law' did not deter the bourgeoisie from beheading Charles I in 1649, nor from throwing out James II in the Glorious Revolution' of 1688.

These acts were determined not by precedent or any existing notions of 'justice' or morality -indeed they flew in the face of earlier established positions.

They reflected what was necessary for the emerging bourgeosie.

For the Tory government, thererore, the question of 'law and order" has nothing whatsoever to do with the rights' of working people and everything to do with the defence of private property: their privately owned banks, factores and wealth.

So, if the 'law' established in an earlier period inconveniently states that school meals must be provided of a certain nutritional value and that nursery provision is compulsory, these laws will be scrapped.

If the law' guarantees the rights of trade unionists to strike and picket, these laws will also go into the dustbin.

At the point where they come into conflict with the interests of finance capital and big business, they must, for the Tories, go. The law is not sacred; it is a question of power.

Blair Peach Thus, whilst conspiracy, charges were used against flying pickets like Des Warren, and the PTA is used against Irish