NOT EVEN the combined super-brain of the employers, the gutter press, the Labour Government and the trade union bureaucracy could have created the water snOrtase. But there's been a conspiracy nevermciess. An attempt is now being made to place responsibility for at least - NE DEAND!!!
TIBIL INO were the only effective resort open to the militant prisoners to reveal the state of Britain's jails today. crowded - there are more men and women in prison than ever before Brutal - their exposure of the beating of a prisoner by four prison warders is only the tip of the iceberg. Repressive - there is no appeal about conditions or incidents except through panels which also deal with internal discipline.
The path followed by the hundred prisoners of Hull has been trodder before by prisoners demanding their September 1966 saw 187 pri•soners at Parkhurst involved in a nonviolent sit-down brutality. Non-violent as •Tal as prisoners were concerned that is. But 80 of them were attacked by nearly 500 prison officers. Many suffered serious injuries.
Ine next collective protest came ir 1969 when a round robin was signed by 120 prisoners and was eventually published in the People. As a result the Home Secretary, Jim Callaghan, o cerea findings recommended the prosecution of four of the warders named in the round robin. Callaghan suppressed the findings of the report. The upshot was the riot of October 1969 — the bloodies! in the history of the British penal system.
Whitewash More recently, prison brutality was dragged out into the light of day with tne violence against nepublican pri soners in Winson Green Prison. This ended with the whitewash acquittal of the warders involved. But the joint action of Republican and other prisoners at Hull will act to highlight the special violence they encounter from the warders and start to overcome hostility from other prisoners.
At any rate, the Republicans must have felt at home when the Saracer personnel carrier from the Fifth Iniskilling Dragoons rumbled into the prison courtyard containing three sol diers thinly disguised as prison offiCers. But the use of the Army in putting down prison revolts is the inevitable logic of prison reform.
The prison population now stands agitate for improvement in their con ditions. So every reform has to be accompanied by the "big stick' control units, limited association of prisoners, massive perimeter security and so on The last mass revolt against prison conditions came in 1972 a matter o weeks after the release of the five from Pentonville had been secured by mass strike action. Yet despite the heroism of the prisoners, - not a ringer was inea in te labou movement to support their struggle Why was this, just after the capitalist class had demonstrated that by count decision they can turn their class enemies into criminals at will?
Weakness One reason is the lies which pour our or mne press 2 DOU pampered prisoners with their feet up watching television or making pottery. But more importantly, it shows the traditional weakness of the British movement towards une more backward sections of the working class And they are politically backward Those on the left who argue that all crimes are political because of the disrespect that a crimina has for private property are mistaken essence of revolution is its collective character. In a socialist society, those people who could not adjust to the new order and resolved this through individual attacks on people or prop erty would be subjected to discipline and restrictions, although in a manner which genuinely re-equipped them to play a role in a revolutionary process Criminal activity is a feature of the politically backward sections of the class, particularly the youth. Individual solutions are sought to solve ten own crisis. unis is essentially what separates the trade union militant dubbed as a 'criminal' by the capitalist class from those who make up the majority of prisoners.
However the capitalist class do not care to make such fine distinctions, So Dick Pooley, national organiser of Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners (PROP), was dead right when he shouted to the Hull protesters that their prison was one of the symbols of working class oppression.