A future unfair for most

Once upon a time in the 18^th century, a Frenchman wrote “the style is the man”. Studying New Labour’s election manifesto published yesterday, it is wise to keep this in mind.

The garish-kitsch-retro design of the manifesto cover is a ham-fisted attempt to refer backwards to Old Labour with lashings of Stalinist Socialist Realism. The “vision” it presents is of a white family looking out over green fields towards a radiant sun emblazoned with the words “a future fair for all” (whatever that means).

From where most of us live in large or small cities and towns, this is not a Britain we would recognise, except when we might be on holiday. Likewise the bizarre fake cornfield projected behind Gordon Brown at the launch – has Britain suddenly turned into a rural idyll?

The appeal is directly to the middle classes, as confirmed by Brown: “We are the party of everybody of middle income and modest incomes in this country. We are the party appealing to middle class voters in every constituency.”

New Labour’s hope is that it can keep the real issues and its real plans in the shadows. Behind all the tinsel and promises of crumbs, the real strategy is “to encourage a culture of long-term commitment to company growth”. There is not an instant’s reflection on what has taken place since 2007, when the financial meltdown got under way.

New Labour’s corporate-friendly “high growth” policy of the last 13 years will continue if it is re-elected – as if there has been no evidence that the financial and economic crash was the direct result of giving free sway to the interests of the banks and global corporate capitalism.

That’s why Lord Mandelson said that “the spirit of Tony Blair smiles down on New Labour today” and described the manifesto as “Blair plus”. Helping the corporations to maintain their growth and profits will remain at the heart of New Labour, however great the suffering this will wreak on all but the super-rich.

New Labour intends to recover the staggering £900 billion national debt by huge cuts in public spending, including £20 billion-worth in the National Health Service and attacks on public sector pensions – punishing the very people who keep the country going – fire-fighters, NHS and council workers.

The manifesto boasts: “We will take a tough stance on public-sector pay, saving over £3 billion by capping public-sector pay rises at one per cent in 2011-12 and 2012-13. We have agreed tough reforms to public-sector pensions.”

Meanwhile, immigrant workers, young people and “problem families” are effectively blamed for social problems and crime. The manifesto proudly announces its primitive attitude: more punishment and medieval-style “shaming”: “We will ensure a total of 96,000 prison places by 2014. More EU and other foreign prisoners will be transferred abroad….For offenders not sentenced to prison we have brought in tough new ‘Community Payback’: hard work in public, wearing orange jackets.”

The database surveillance state will be breathing down our necks and prying into our lives. CCTV, DNA profiling and databases, biometric ID schemes (i.e. passports) will be “offered” at high prices. DNA data will be kept for six years for “serious” offenders.

A vision? New ideas? Quite the opposite. The manifesto is a tawdry and shameful attempt is to hoodwink the middle classes and whip up anti-immigration sentiments. Meanwhile, the need to pour money into the black hole of debt to pay for the banking bail-outs will consign lower-paid and public sector workers, the poor, the young, the disabled and pensioners to an impoverished and insecure fate.

And yet, you still meet people who tell us that you have to vote New Labour to keep the Tories out. Surely they are just joking?

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

The 'Tsar' of Downing Street

Louise Casey is an archetypal New Labour apparatchik. She doesn’t care too much about human rights (if at all) and believes that the state’s priority is to identify and punish people as a way of changing behaviour. Listening to her is enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Casey is a classic case of a poacher turned gamekeeper. She made her name in the housing world, rising to deputy director of Shelter. Recruited to New Labour in 1997, Casey was appointed to head the government's rough sleepers unit and earned the title, "homelessness Tsar". She immediately declared that handing out soup and sleeping bags to those living on the street was merely perpetuating their misery.

The government was determined to rid the streets of the destitute and claimed a great success. Her old employers disputed her claims. The charity points out that the number of homeless people is at record levels and now stands over 100,000. "Homelessness is now a hidden problem. We want the government to build more affordable homes," says Shelter.

After this great achievement, Casey was appointed “respect Tsar” and headed the Home Office’s so-called anti-social behaviour (ASB) unit. This immediately set about criminalising young people by handing them ASB orders (Asbos) through the civil courts. When the orders were invariably broken, the teenagers were often jailed. Other “undesirables” also became targets, leading Harry Fletcher, from the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo), to say of Casey. "She seems to be defending every Asbo ever made. We are concerned that the original purpose of the legislation has been exceeded."

Napo is one of 30 organisations, including Liberty and the Howard League for Penal Reform, that banded together to form "Asbo Concern". Fletcher adds: "[The orders] are being used to sweep anybody off the street who is deemed to be undesirable: the mentally ill, those with Asperberger's syndrome and so on. People are being locked up for breaching orders imposed for offences, such as prostitution or begging, that are not imprisonable.” While she was “respect Tsar”, Casey famously made an expletive-ridden speech to senior police officers which joked about binge drinking.

After the respect issue was taken care of, Casey turned her attention to the criminal justice system. Now A cabinet office adviser and would-be “crime Tsar”, Casey today announced that the system is "distant, unaccountable and unanswerable". Her analysis was typically brutal and authoritarian: "We're all a little tired of hearing about the human rights and civil liberties of people who break the law. For years we have been listening to that - who is speaking up for the rights of law-abiding decent people?" she told BBC Breakfast. She recommends that offenders serving community sentences be made more "visible" to identify that they are being punished for breaking the law.

Casey said: "Once these people commit crimes they disappear into the system. We need to get over some of the hand-wringing that says we cannot put them in a uniform." She also suggests the government should consider contracting out enforcement of community work from the probation service and that probation officers be given powers to extend the time served by offenders on community service.

So now Britain is set to become a sort of Guantanamo Bay camp, where the unfortunate inmates at the notorious Camp X-ray wear orange jump suits so that they can be more easily identified. When you see someone in the street wearing an offender’s “uniform”, you will have Casey and New Labour to thank for the latest in a long line of human rights abuses that resonate with some of the darkest days of European history.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Crime and punishment

Perhaps it could be a two-part question set for those taking a “citizenship test” to prove that they know about British values before getting a passport (or an ID card). How big is the prison population and what distinguishes the country’s record in jailing people? Answer: the prison population in England and Wales has risen to a record high of 82,006 - 21 places short of capacity; nowhere in Western Europe jails more of its population than England and Wales, where about 147 people per 100,000 are in prison.

New Labour has presided over a rise of more than one third in prison numbers since 1997. When it first came into government, the prison population was 60,131. The increase is not surprising since during the same period, the state has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences and ministers have ratcheted up the rhetoric on crime to appease the middle-class law-and-order brigade. More than half of prisoners serve less than six months and about one in five prisoners is being held on remand.

While new social house building has slumped under New Labour, some 17,000 extra prison spaces have been created. A further 8,000 are planned. It is clear where the government’s priorities lie. But like most of this government’s policies, they are simply not working. So after years of urging courts to jail anyone and everyone, justice secretary Jack Straw today calls on magistrates to send fewer people to prison – presumably until the prison building programme can catch up.

The causes of crime are complex but in a period of comparative prosperity it is clear that significant numbers of people remain excluded and alienated from mainstream consumer society. So in 2006, the second biggest group sentenced to prison were convicted of drugs offences and about 8,500 of burglary. Almost half of prisoners ran away as a child - compared to 11% of the general population. About one in three female and half of male prisoners were excluded from school and a majority have no qualifications. Less than 5% of the general population have two or more mental disorders, compared to 72% of male and 70% of female sentenced prisoners.

Locking up people in overcrowded prisons as a punishment and a supposed deterrent simply doesn’t work. Re-offending rates among offenders are high - about two thirds are reconvicted within two years of release. Among men aged 18-21 the rate is about three quarters. Over half of offenders receive no training. And only one in five of prisoners exceed the standards expected of an 11 year old in writing. Nearly one in three will not have somewhere to live upon release. A majority of prisoners will have no job to go to and six out of 10 employers automatically exclude those with a criminal record.

The prison system reflects the class divided and unequal society we live in, where the political elites play to the gallery with their crude divisions of people into “good” and “evil”. Prison is viewed, in a simple, medieval way, as a means of inflicting punishment, of retribution rather than a possible route to rehabilitation and integration.

Globalised capitalist society has destroyed meaningful, well-paid jobs in many areas of the country, especially for men, adding to the sense of social exclusion. Those numbers will increase as economic recession bites, adding to the tendency to offend. In framing alternatives to New Labour’s über-competitive society, we must rethink the whole approach to offending and prison to create a system that reflects the society we would like to have, and not the one that Straw presides over.


Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor