So, on the cop thing... it’s easy (and cathartic) for those of us on the revolutionary/radical left of the labour movement to collectively vent about how abject Labour’s policies and general “law and order” positioning is. But we need to talk seriously about shifting the debate.
A radical critique of state power has rarely been a majority viewpoint within the labour movement, and it’s currently a pretty marginal position within our class.
Where I work, people’s default response to antisocial behaviour from passengers is often to call for increased BTP presence. Similarly, if you live on an estate where antisocial crime is a real issue, it can be hard to imagine immediate responses beyond “more cops”.
Does anyone have experience of constructively debating these issues in your CLP or union branch? Would be good to share approaches and discuss possible alternative policies to propose.
This article, by my @labour_days cohost Ellie, gets into some of the issues: theclarionmag.org/2018/03/23/vio…
We also tried to address them on @labour_days in this episode: m.soundcloud.com/labour-days/ep…
I know there are good activist resources available around general anti-carceral politics; does anyone have experience of using them in a labour movement context, and to what end?
All genuinely open questions. I doubt we can get “abolish the police and replace it with democratic workers’ militias accountable to the local labour movement and community groups” into the next Labour manifesto, but surely we can move away from leaflets shaped like PCs’ helmets.
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