Before 1979 the prison system was administered by a succession of Tory and Labour governments, with no obvious difference: neither exhibited concern for prisoners’ welfare but nor did they use mass imprisonment and the ‘war on crime’ as a rallying cry. As Thatcherism took hold, imprisonment increased, sentences became longer and more people were remanded in custody. Conditions were squalid and prison staff brutal. Prisoners protested throughout the 1980s, culminating in the Strangeways uprising in 1990, which publicly exposed conditions so thoroughly that no politician dared defend them.
This mood was short-lived and by 1993 the backlash had begun, clearly signalled by Michael Howard’s call for ‘greater austerity’ and John Major’s assertion that ‘Prison Works’. In many respects, Labour and the Tories mirror one another on law and order: when David Waddington condemned the Strangeways protesters, Roy Hattersley joined in heartily; when ‘reform’ became the rage, Labour were ‘reformers’; today Michael Howard and Jack Straw compete to be the most right-wing; that is when Straw is not actively colluding with the government, as he did by giving the go-ahead for the new prison ship in Portland Harbour. There has been, however, a class difference which surfaced in times of crisis. Labour, having its origins in the labour aristocracy, has tended to support the Prison Officers’ Association’s reactionary but anti-government line of ‘need for more staff’/’blame cuts’/’oppose privatisation’, allowing it to attack Conservative policy without defending prisoners. In government, Labour will be forced to ditch this alliance for financial reasons and will continue Tory attacks on prison officers’ privileged status. The RCG does not consider the POA to be a legitimate trade union or see its defence of its members’ conditions as in any way progressive. We believe that our role as socialists is to give solidarity to the struggles of prisoners and expose the use of repressive prisons.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 136 ELECTION SPECIAL APRIL/MAY 1997
