...

and precise

I understand why activists hate the screws, but that is no reason to act in solidarity with them. They are working class people, who are having their already terrible conditions made worse by the government, in the interests of capital.

It comes down to this: if you are sent to prison, they will have the keys. If you've acted in solidarity with them, they will remember that. The same goes for the police and the armed forces.

Neon Black opined:
"It comes down to this: if you are sent to prison, they will have the keys. If you've acted in solidarity with them, they will remember that."

a) How will they know who supported them?
b) They're still the boot boys of the ruling class.

Of course for Fight Racism Fight Imperialism all the unions in Britain are labour aristocratic and chauvinist, whose privileges derive from oprression of the third world (or semicolonial world as marxists would call it) and so are complicit in oppression of their brothers and sisters in the third world - look at the terrible role of the TUC in supporting the occupation in Iraq.

This equates the leaderships of these unions and their pro-capitalist politics with those of the members, and sees temporary ideas these workers have as set ones, fixed that can't be overturned through struggle. If we don''t support prison officers, how about Unite workers in the defence industry that churns out armaments for the imperialist armies and arms trade to pro-west dictators? Or striking PCS civil servants in the MoD?

Absolutely true that prison officers play a role in imprisonment, a function of the capitalist state, and in doing so they have many warped ideas. But they are not the police they do not crush movements on the streets and smash through picket lines, they are not the bosses courts and judges that condemn protestors to prison or ban postal strikes. They simply run the prisons. We don't have to support the bad things they do to support their strike for better pay, the right to legally strike etc. After a revolution there will still be prisons no doubt - humane with the aim of rehabilitation - in order to hold racists, murderers, fascists etc. What else could you do? But there won't be police, workers militias and patrols would keep order on the streets as in Russia and Spain. They would arrest bosses sabotaging socialist measures, not workers on strikeor protestors.

Ultimately the person who just commented is right, we want to use the fact that they are unionised to ensure solidarity with protestors, the poor etc. Solidarity from other workers and unions can actually challenge the POA where it gets it wrong, due to its sectional approach that all union bureaucracy's have - since when has Unite led the campaigns against the arms trade, or against emissions from cars? This is a general feature of the unions. I am a postie, and you can bet our leaders would defend junk mail, socialists wouldn't, we call for the conversion and transformation of industries under workers control, with retraining for new jobs on a trade union wage.

Hope that is a bit clearer than the sectarianism of RFRI!

Prison officers defy anti-union laws
Workers Power 318 – September 2007
 http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=152,1403,0,0,1,0

For the first time in decades, a national trade union had officially called unlawful strike action. The Prison Officers Association had defied the anti-union laws.

When the breakthrough finally came, it was from the most unlikely source. At 7am on 29 August, 20,000 prison officers walked off the job with no warning, no secret ballot and no sign of when they would return.

The results were stunning. All 129 prisons were affected; new inmates were returned to police cells; court cases were postponed because there was nowhere to incarcerate the guilty. Ministers rushed to the High Court, winning an injunction ordering a return to work. But even this had no effect; concessions were needed, and they came. By 7pm, justice minister Jack Straw agreed to "meaningful talks", something he had refused to enter into until then.

Rising workloads, falling pay levels, and having to deliver a worsening service: this was the background to the strike. The government's decision to stagger its miserly 2.5 per cent pay offer, making it worth only 1.9 per cent over the year, was the final straw. With inflation officially running at 3.8 per cent - and in reality much higher for working class households - this would mean a real pay cut.

Socialists and many workers often find themselves on the wrong side of the prison service. It is an arm of the state, in the last analysis there to protect capitalist property and social hierarchy. Socialists aim to break up this repressive apparatus and replace it with a working class justice system.

Nevertheless, the POA members, like millions of other public sector workers, confront deteriorating pay and conditions. Under Labour, Britain's prison population has risen from 61,467 to 80,205. Jails operate at 112 per cent capacity, as the government tries to appease middle class demands for tougher sentences. Chief inspector of prisons Ann Owers believes such conditions have directly led to 50 inmates taking their own lives this year.

As one striker, Kirk Robinson, told The Guardian, "When I started here we were locking up criminals. Now it's mostly people with a drug habit or psychiatric disorders. I'd guess 80 per cent."

The prison system targets those that challenge the capitalist order and its victims - the poor and the oppressed. But we do support prison wardens' right to organise and to strike, and their demands for better pay, just as we support prisoners' demands for democratic rights and better conditions. Any action that weakens the ability of the capitalist class to exploit and rule us has to be a good thing. Especially if it proves that anti-union laws are toothless... if we only have the guts to defy them.

"Absolutely true that prison officers play a role in imprisonment, a function of the capitalist state, and in doing so they have many warped ideas. But they are not the police they do not crush movements on the streets and smash through picket lines, they are not the bosses courts and judges that condemn protestors to prison or ban postal strikes. They simply run the prisons."

Could easily translate to:

Absolutely true that concentration camp guards play a role in genocide, a function of the fascist state, and in doing so they have many warped ideas. But they are not the gestapo they do not crush movements on the streets and smash through picket lines, they are not the bosses courts and judges that condemn protestors to gas chambers or ban postal strikes. They simply run the gas chambers.

'Hey, only doing my job, mate'.


"After a revolution there will still be prisons no doubt - humane with the aim of rehabilitation - in order to hold racists, murderers, fascists etc. What else could you do?"

You just asked someone called 'Tear Down the Walls' what else you could do. The clue is in the name. You aren't describing any revolution I'd want to be part of.

So what else could we do ? On the surface it seems a fair point. A better question is what did we do before prisons. Do you know prisons are a relatively recent invention, an extension of poor-houses. That's why you only see poor people inside.

So what did we do for the tens of thousands of years before prisons ? What do societies do that still don't have prisons ? There isn't a single correct answer. But there is a singlularly incorrect answer - to act as the bully-boys persecuting your own class, to imprison the weak to protect the powerful, to kow-tow unashamedly and still call it a class struggle.

So it is nice Kirk Robinson can empathise and say "When I started here we were locking up criminals. Now it's mostly people with a drug habit or psychiatric disorders. I'd guess 80 per cent."

But when he started 98% of the people he was locking up were poor. And today 99% of the people he is locking up are poor. So fuck Kirk, and to hell with your 'only obeying orders/ only paying the bills' excuses. The bastards in power only hold onto power through the subserviant brutality of self-excusing shits like Kirk.

"While in the 1970s open National Front membership was rife among POA members, the union today has a black Chairman, Colin Moses."

HMP Barlinnie warders posed for a picture dressed as the Ku Klux Klan, published in the News of the World on February 4th 2007. Being comfortable enough to pose for such a picture indicates how commonplace and institionalised racism among warders. An inquiry was ordered but nothing more was heard about it, so no one can have been sacked. So even this year the POA would have been representing fascist warders - and you want to stand in solidarity with them ?

your are daft

to prison
 http://www.liverpooltimes.net/2007/10/19/how-other-working-class-people-fight-for-justice/#more-797

‘During the course of the day a prisoner at Acklington, who was locked in his cell because of the strike, killed himself and POA members crossed their own picket lines to repress protests at Liverpool prison and Lancaster Farms young offender institute.’

‘…we should remember that prison officers never stand in solidarity with prisoners who take protest action in support of their human rights. In 1990 when prisoners at Strangeways rose up in protest against years of oppression, brutality and degradation, the POA was first in the queue to denounce them, call them animals and tell barefaced lies about their actions, claiming protesting prisoners had committed murder and torture, in order to prevent public sympathy and destroy solidarity.’

Prison officers have been presented with many opportunities to show their solidarity with prisoners. They have NEVER risen to the challenge. Pointing this out is not sectarianism. Pretending it is otherwise is just peddling illusions.

Leaflet by the IBT (www.bolshevik.org) on the prison officers' strike.

Which Side Are You On?
Screws Out of the TUC!

On 29 August, the Prison Officers Association (POA) defied the
government and walked off the job for a day, in protest against a 2.5%
pay offer. The government's unwillingness to aggressively go after the
POA has been celebrated by various reformist leftists as an example of
how militant trade unionists can successfully defy reactionary
legislation. But the POA is not a workers' organisation – they
represent the personnel of a vital arm of state repression. This is
why the government has been so reluctant to move against them and also
why it is a mistake to view their action as a blow against anti-trade
union laws.

Marxists do not consider police and prison officers as part of the
workers' movement, regardless of their social origin, as Leon Trotsky
made clear:

`The fact that the police was originally recruited in large
numbers from among Social Democratic workers is absolutely
meaningless. Consciousness is determined by environment even in this
instance. The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the
capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker.'
(`What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat', 1932)

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Communist Party of Great Britain
(CPGB) and Socialist Party (SP) were all enthusiastic about the POA's
strike. The SWP opined:

`Prison officers should have the right to strike and to a union….'

. . .

`There is a clear lesson for other workers here. If prison
officers can take unofficial illegal strike action over Brown's cuts
and force concessions from New Labour ministers, surely other public
sector unions must be able to do the same.'
(`Prison officers' unofficial strike rattles government',
www.socialistworker.co.uk, 1 September)

While the CPGB characterised the POA's members as `direct agents of
state repression', they nonetheless consider them `exploited workers'
and concluded:

`Communists are certainly in favour of prison workers and members
of the police force having the right to form and join trade unions and
having the right to strike. It is akin to our demand that members of
the armed forces be given such rights.'
(Weekly Worker, 6 September)

The SP took a similar tack:

`All England and Wales prisons were affected and the government
was left reeling in shock. This united and determined action will be
applauded by socialists and trade unionists throughout the labour
movement and stands as an example of how to treat the anti-union laws.'
(The Socialist, 30 August)

Socialist Worker acknowledged that prison guards are usually
right-wing and many are overt racists:

`Prison officers' work, upholding law and order, frequently pushes
them to accept the most right wing ideas and actions of the system.
One of their main jobs is to control prisoners – and throughout the
prison system, many officers have a proven record of racism and violence.'
(op. cit.)

The Weekly Worker also tempered its enthusiasm for the POA with a
disclaimer:

`While Marxists can only but approve of prison officers and other
workers in uniform trying to assert themselves as workers by
organising in trade unions and striking, we never lose sight of the
reality of the state's institutions of repression of which they are part.'
(op. cit.)

The SP's statement, by contrast, simply praised the strikers'
`courageous stand':

`Prison officers' leaders are perhaps less intimidated by threats
of prison than others might be, knowing that they would be looked
after inside by their own union members! They would also meet a good
reception from a layer of fellow inmates, some of who welcomed the
strike action, despite suffering deprivations on that day.

`This support is partly because the officers were tipped over the
edge into taking their first ever strike action not just as a result
of a derisory pay offer, but also because of terrible prison
overcrowding, a situation that badly affects prisoners and officers alike.

`However, this does not detract from their courageous stand, which
should be noted well by other trade union leaders, who in any case
would also be treated as heroes by other trade unionists and workers
if they defied the anti-union laws in the interests of their members.'
(Socialist, 30 August)

The SP's enthusiasm for the `courageous' screws led them to invite POA
General Secretary Brian Caton to speak at the opening rally of
`Socialism 2007'. Perhaps he will be invited to join Peter Taaffe in
singing the Internationale at the conclusion of the conference.

Workers Power (WP), which has occasionally criticised those who
describe cops and screws as `workers in uniform', tried to give its
support for the POA a slightly leftist tilt:

`… we do support prison wardens' right to organise and to strike,
and their demands for better pay, just as we support prisoners'
demands for democratic rights and better conditions. Any action that
weakens the ability of the capitalist class to exploit and rule us has
to be a good thing. Especially if it proves that the anti-union laws
are toothless … if we only have the guts to defy them.'
(Workers Power, September)

Permanent Revolution (PR, a 2006 split from Workers Power) took
essentially the same view, claiming in a statement dated 31 August
that: `By supporting its [the POA] action … we push the fight for
wider union action against Brown's pay freeze forward'. Smashing
anti-union legislation and Brown's public-sector pay freeze requires a
willingness to take on the capitalist state – those who want to paint
disgruntled members of the repressive apparatus as a vanguard of a
resurgent workers' movement act to undermine the possibility of any
serious struggle.

Abuse by prison officers: systematic and routine

Many of those leftists who have hailed the POA action suggest that
prison officers have a contradictory role – sometimes good and
sometimes bad:

`We cannot by any means always endorse every trade union action
that they take. There are many demands that they might make – such as
those that would improve their own conditions at the expense of
prisoners' rights – which we would never support and would in fact
argue should be actively fought against by the trade union movement as
a whole.'
(Weekly Worker, 6 September)

In their statement of 31 August, PR takes a similar position:

`The POA is a curious hybrid. Part of its membership is based in
special hospitals like Broadmoor and operates, effectively like mental
health nurses, though with extremely dangerous patients. Another part
of its membership in the prisons – the screws – is, like the police, a
coercive arm of the state. Their role in inflicting repression on
working class prisoners is well documented and they have operated a
no-strike deal with the state for many years (like the police) in
order to carry out the role effectively. They are not, in other words,
the archetypal union militants you would expect to be carrying the
torch on behalf of the wider movement in the current struggle against
pay-restraint.'

Screws are indeed a `coercive arm of the state', which is why they are
not, and can never be, part of the `wider workers movement'. The
brutal abuse of prisoners is routine in Her Majesty's prison system. A
few years ago the Prison Service admitted that officers at Wormwood
Scrubs regularly `subjected inmates to sustained beatings, mock
executions, death threats, choking and torrents of racist abuse'
(Guardian, 11 December 2003). All just part of the routine for POA
members on the job.

The idea of kindly screws functioning as benign social workers,
anxious to help rehabilitate prisoners, and concerned for the welfare
of their charges is simply a bourgeois myth. The function of the
repressive state apparatus is to intimidate and crush anyone who falls
afoul of capitalist law and order. The abuse of those caught up in the
machinery of the prison system is brutal and systematic – it is not
down to a handful of `rogue elements'.

PR tries to spin its support to the screws as a matter of smart
revolutionary tactics:

`But life throws up contradictions and while weird purists who
pass themselves off as leftists can only wail and denounce the POA
revolutionaries have to take an active approach that uses the
contradiction to hasten the break up of the capitalist order. That's
why we should support the POA strike and call on the union to defy the
court injunction and intensify its action.

`Such an approach can pose the question to the POA – who are you
loyal to, the working class movement and its discipline, or the state?'
(op. cit.)

The POA membership are hired capitalist thugs. PR supporters should
ask themselves how better rewarded and equipped agents of capitalist
repression would be likely to `hasten the break up of the capitalist
order'. `Weird purists' like Lenin and Trotsky, who asserted that the
repressive bourgeois state could never be wielded as an instrument of
liberation by the oppressed, had harsh things to say about
`socialists' who pedalled similar notions as `Marxist' tactics.

Reformist cretins & social-democratic illusions

To accept the POA as part of the workers' movement implies that the
coercive elements of the bourgeois state can somehow be brought under
workers', or `community', control. This approach is in absolute
contradiction to the Marxist position on the state. Prison officers
are an integral part of the coercive apparatus which brutally enforces
a social system based on exploitation and oppression. Like cops and
members of the officer caste, screws are class enemies – they have no
place in the workers' movement.

The SP, who are among the most vocal proponents of the view that cops,
screws, etc., are really `workers in uniform', have long upheld the
social-democratic illusion that the working class can use the
capitalists' state to build socialism. In the one union where the SP
has real influence, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS),
they say nothing about the presence of immigration officers. A
genuinely Marxist group would call for throwing these vicious thugs
out of the union movement (see `The most disgraceful defeat: PCS
capitulation on pension scheme',
www.bolshevik.org/leaflets/PCSbetrayal.html). The SP leadership
pretends that there is no contradiction between defending `illegal'
immigrants persecuted by the state, and supporting the demands for
higher wages and better working conditions for those who harass and
deport them.

In its 31 August statement, PR echoes one of the SP's traditional
justifications for including cops in the union movement when it
brightly proposes:

`… we can also help split the union from those within its ranks
who see their role as guardians of capitalism's prison houses and win
those who aren't to a longer term struggle of fighting to overthrow
the capitalism's [sic] system of (in)justice and replace it with one
based on the needs and interests of the working class.'

Individual prison officers may indeed grow tired of doing the
capitalists' dirty work and come to solidarise with the oppressed
against the oppressors. But there is a class line that separates the
organs of capitalist repression and the organisations of the working
class. In order to become part of the workers' movement, a screw, or a
cop, must first resign their post. Those who remain on duty to carry
out the instructions of Her Majesty's government are, despite any
private reservations they may have, agents of the bosses and, as such,
opponents of the struggle for human liberation.

The workers' movement should of course welcome and encourage any
individual screws who are ready to change sides, but only
social-democratic cretins can regard those who carry out the essential
repressive functions of the bourgeois state to be part of the workers'
movement. Rather than support the prison guards, socialists should be
campaigning to expel the POA from the TUC, and throw immigration cops
out of the PCS.

10 November 2007

International Bolshevik Tendency public meeting

Room 2B, ULU, Malet St, London WC1E

Sunday 18 November - 1:30pm