[Socialism Today, No 14, December 1996, p. 10-13]
The Dunblane killings, the death of Philip Lawrence, and the high profile exclusions of unruly school students, have all acted as a magnet to politicians to parade their views on the ‚remoralisation‘ of Britain. Unscrupulously tapping into genuine fears to gain votes at the approaching election, argues Margaret Creear, they hope focusing on ‚morality‘ will compensate for the unpopularity of their economic and social policies.
The sense of disintegration which has gripped many people flows from the general insecurity of life today. There is a general perception that society is not going forward, caused by unemployment, job insecurity, housing problems and a general decline in the social infrastructure including the NHS, education, transport and the environment. This degeneration in the material base of society, together with the growing inequality since the mid-1970s and the perceived growth in crime rates, especially juvenile crime, undermines confidence in government.
The current moral crusade may be well-meaning and understandable by individuals who have suffered or fear the effects of violence, but politicians try to portray the decline in the quality of life as being the result of ‚moral decline‘, not the result of the policies they have pursued or the ‚market system‘ they support.
There are two related strands in the current campaigns – ‚law and order‘ and ‚the family‘. The theme of both has been repression and authoritarianism. This might be the attempts to reintroduce caning into schools where, completely irrationally. there is an assumption that beating children makes them better behaved. Never mind that physical violence towards children is as likely to teach them that it is a good way of getting people to do as you want. Smacking a child in the home has similar ramifications. Often it is an expression of frustration rather than a worked out tactic to bring children up to behave sociably or just safely. How many times in a supermarket has an overworked, frustrated mother or father shouted to a tired. bored child ‚Stop crying or I’ll hit you‘, followed by a smack and louder screams. [t may be understandable, if counter-productive, in those circumstances. But can it form the basis of government policy?
One of the solutions to ‚indiscipline‘ in schools, according to the ‚Education Forum‘ convened by education minister Gillian Shepherd, is to call for ‚absolute values‘ to be recognised. Yet morality is not ‚absolute truths‘. It reflects social and economic development. For example, the Stalinist-type regime of Najibullah in Afghanistan went some way towards involving women in the workforce and releasing them from the isolation of the home. The Islamic Taliban however, have imposed a different set of values in which the imposition of the veil is only the most surface manifestation of the removal of women’s rights to work, to education and even to appear in public, accompanied by extreme violence towards women who do not conform.
Many value judgements tend to reflect accepted practise. For example, more and more people thought it was all right for women with children to go out to work as the number of women in the workforce rose. In 1984, 63% approved; in 1993, 76%. Attitudes towards single parents have stayed fairly tolerant and supportive largely because more and more people now have relatives or friends who are single parents. In other words, on many issues social attitudes follow material social changes rather than vice versa.
There are generally recognised moral precepts, which express what’s needed to live in society or reflect concerns about contemporary society. This was illustrated in a survey of young people by MORI in October 1994, Asked to draw up their ‚ten commandments‘, they included, in order of importance: you should not kill or steal; you should treat others as you would like to be treated; you shouldn’t use violence or be racist; you should care for the environment and shouldn’t take drugs. Even so such moral generalities are often hedged with qualifications. For example, not using violence is qualified when violence is used in self-defence. The concept of self-defence can change because of cultural and social conditions, as is happening in the case of domestic violence.
War is exempt from the prohibition on killing. Violence can be officially sanctioned by people who generally would be expected to oppose it. ‚Archbishop blesses smacking‘, read one recent headline in The Guardian (26 October). He claimed, ‚it instils a sense of discipline, helps them understand the rules they have to obey‘. Obviously these rules would be incomprehensible unless accompanied by a firm smack round the head. Some MPs want to introduce a register of child abusers but at the same time want to bring back corporal punishment in schools and encourage it in the home. The main assumption here is that violence and coercion is justified in the hands of those in authority. This is not about morality, it’s about control.
The morality touted by the Tories is supposed to be a system of values to which all adhere. The ruling class tries to pass off its own ideas and interests, often masquerading as ‚the national interest‘, as being natural and eternal. But capitalist society is divided by contending interests and vastly different conditions of life for the different classes. This inevitably means that judgements will be conditioned by class viewpoints and actions praised or condemned depending on your class viewpoint. For example, a strike might be seen as justified by those who need better conditions but will be condemned by the bosses. The class bias in the present campaigns can be seen by asking who, according to politicians and newspapers, is in need of moral regeneration. The arrogant, frivolous and chaotic Royal family or the struggling single parents on a council estate? The boys on the playing fields of Eton or the young people in a comprehensive in an area of high unemployment? Wealthy tax evaders or impoverished social security claimants?
Moral panics and ideological offensives are features of class conflict, especially in this period of capitalist stagnation. The main aim of the current campaign is to deflect blame for social degeneration onto sections of the working class. Although currently related to the upcoming general election, such offensives are likely to remain a feature of political life because of the chronic inability of the capitalists to find a way forward.
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Since the Thatcher era, when inequality in wealth and the accompanying social problems accelerated, we have been subjected to an ideological offensive which links the market with conservative moral values stressing individual rather than community responsibility. In this schema, the state of society is judged by the state of the family. Social problems are brought about by moral decline, which, in turn, is the result of the weakening of the family as its members pursue selfish individualism instead of abiding by eternal traditions. Social reactionaries argue that permissive parents lead to ‚disturbed, uncontrollable children‘. ‚Welfare dependency‘ takes away the sense of responsibility parents and especially fathers have for maintaining their children financially and encourages ‚deviant‘ lifestyles, such as single parent families. The same reactionaries appeal to nostalgia, a lost Golden Age, when children respected their parents, crime rates were low, marriage was for life, streets were safe etc. But this was never the reality.
Thatcher used to refer approvingly to ‚Victorian values‘ – when there was an enormous crime rate, widespread prostitution, child labour, the abuse of women and children in the home, hypocritical moral double standards and horrendous conditions under which the working class lived and died prematurely.
Melanie Phillips, a journalist who pursues this ’strong family‘ theme most weeks in The Observer, writes, ‚High rates of divorce, cohabitation, babies born out of wedlock are to be regretted because of the damage they do to individuals and to our civic society‘. This common assumption, like most of the propaganda, actually has little basis in fact. Divorce is often traumatic especially when pursued through an adversarial court system more recently compounded by the Child Support Act. But so is a household where personal relationships are breaking down or routinely violent. The quality of personal relationships and a decent standard of living are more important to a child’s development than the make-up of the household. The main problems faced by single parents are not caused by a shortage of morals but by poverty, isolation and overwork – all of which is socially determined by capitalism.
The much trumpeted link between family breakdown and crime has never been proved. In fact, the general social conditions and individual family history in terms of relatives, especially fathers with criminal records, have a complicated impact.
The alleged link between TV and video violence and juvenile crime was contradicted by one of the few actual studies done which showed the viewing habits of young offenders were similar to the rest of their age group except that being poorer they often had less access to videos and computer games. (Young offenders and the media – Policy Studies Institute), However, a third of them did say they read The Sun, which might be a line of investigation worth pursuing!
Politicians know quite well what the real situation is, since some of the best information refuting their arguments is produced by government briefing papers, Yet they ignore the truth because it has nothing to do with what they are trying to do. A section of the Tory party, especially the more right-wing, populist section around Portillo and Redwood, are quite prepared to get a base for themselves amongst the most backward and older sections of society who feel most threatened by ’social degeneration‘, by using these issues in the way the moral right has in the USA.
However, the moral ‚line‘ on the family is not necessarily consistent amongst its proponents. In the report of the recent Education Forum only five out of 150 put out a statement reminiscent of the ‚moral majority‘ in the USA. This argued that ‚the most important relationships throughout life are those experienced within the immediate or extended family. Children should be nurtured within a stable, moral and loving home environment with preferably both mother and father in a happy marriage relationship. Marriage and parenting successfully undertaken are very creative of good values in children‘.
The majority position was less specific: ‚in particular we value families as sources of love and support for their members and as the basis of a society in which people care for others‘. In general few would object to this, particularly as the word ‚families‘ is used ambiguously to make it possible to read into this not just one form of family, i.e. the patriarchal, nuclear family.
More liberal politicians have to take into account that families have changed. They don’t want to alienate large sections of society who can’t or don’t want to live in a tradition nuclear family or who simply don’t think politicians should prescribe how people should form their personal relationships.
Similarly Tony Blair, although he has tried to identify with a more authoritarian mood towards children and family life, has also tried to have it both ways by qualifying his remarks. He argues, in a recent article entitled ‚Towards a decent responsible society‘, that ‚we require a moral purpose and direction presently lacking. We reject not tolerance, but extreme libertarianism … Rights and duties go together … The idea of social morality is not a lurch into nostalgia or Victorian hypocrisy, We do not intend to return to the old prejudices about sex, sexuality and the role of women. Neither do we believe that supporting the family means attacking lone parents … The idea is to create a decent, well ordered and stable society for today‘. Yet although he rejects nostalgia and Victorian hypocrisy, most of his remarks stand in that tradition of cant.
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Why do these ideas about crime and the family keep taking centre stage when they so clearly have no factual base? They represent an appeal to old prejudices in a time of rapid change and crisis. This idealised picture also presents a picture of how many people would like their lives to be, even though the reality is very different and the image presented is unattainable.
The changes in family structure actually relate to economic and political developments, for example the drawing of women into the workforce, demands to end discrimination, the winning of the right to divorce and the conceding of benefits which, alongside paid work, allowed many women to survive independently if in extreme hardship. Such changes don’t signal the end of personal relationships but the wider variety of household forms they might take. Seventy per cent of ‚illegitimate‘ births are registered by both parents; it is the institution of marriage which is declining.
But someone caught up in these changes finds it difficult to dissect the complex trends affecting their life. They are experienced as a personal issue. Problems which arise in the family, such as poverty, domestic violence or children going ‚off the rails‘, can be seen as matters of blame and guilt rather than social issues. This in encouraged by moral panics. The Education Form, for example, talks of establishing ‚blame‘ and ’shame‘ – the feeling of guilt which can paralyse and demoralise people rather than encourage them to search for an alternative through collective action. Obviously individuals cannot be absolved of all responsibility for their behaviour but the massive contribution made by social and economic policy has to be recognised.
The fact is that the ruling class have no intention of returning women to the home and have few illusions in enforcing a patriarchal nuclear family. Women workers are now a vital part of the workforce and are likely to increase as a proportion for the foreseeable future. But their system cannot afford the welfare state on the level promised in the past. They fear the social explosion which attempts zu cut back the welfare state will produce and therefore, provided it will keep within safe bounds, they have no objections to enforce to mask the real nature of the problems working class people face.
A key problem is the apparent lack of a mass alternative ideology which expresses the interests of working class people and is based on finding practical solutions. A feature of the ‚remoralisation‘ debate, give or take minor differences in emphasis, is the unanimity of New Labour and the Tories. Alternatives to Tory ideas have come from the occasional expert, but what’s needed is an ideological, economic and social alternative and a mass working class party determined to carry it through.
Of course this ideological vacuum is not new. Kinnock also said in the 1980s that where the family was concerned he was a reactionary. But Blair has taken this much further, not just echoing the ideas of the ruling class but also severing New Labour’s links with the interests of the working class through his adherence to the market.
Blair says that his ideas on the family are a reaction against the individualism and greed of the Thatcher era. But what do they amount to that is different? He says policies should support families. But when you take away the lectures, proposed volunteers, and punitive action such as curfews for young children, there isn’t much support left. There is no question of a minimum wage on the level to take all workers out of the poverty trap, a comprehensive system of childcare, or a shorter working week to allow parents to have enough time to spend with their children. New Labour’s alternatives of a cob-web-thin ’safety net‘ welfare state mixed with individual provision through private insurance, differs very little from the Tories. It will create destitution for millions and will devastate the very family relations the moralisers pretend to support. It is New Labour‘ failure to offer a solution to these problems which leads them to line up with the moralisers.
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Sometimes, especially in this period of profound capitalist crisis, social issues can become a critical factor as we saw recently in Belgium, where a movement already developing in opposition to the effects of Maastricht, was given a further impetus by opposition to the state cover-up of a paedophile ring. On this occasion the political leaders successfully presented this as a moral issue, something above class interests. A movement which could have brought down the government, with clear leadership linking apparently ‚personal‘ issues to the more familiar collective, class issues of living standards, state corruption and democratic accountability, was turned instead into a safety valve to let off steam. On a smaller scale the recent moral campaign in Britain over education diverted a growing crisis on funding and the wider issues of inequality and youth unemployment into a discussion on caning and parental control.
However, there is a limit to the effectiveness of moral panics and they can sometimes misfire. The Tories must have been relieved to return to the, for them, relatively safer territory of the family and controlling young people after the Snowdrop campaign, which expressed the fears of many people that Britain might go down the same violent road as the USA. This forced them to move towards gun control proposals which have alienated many of their natural supporters.
But still lurking in the recesses of their minds must be the ‚Back to Basics‘ fiasco. The problem for both Tories and New Labour is the fact that they are being forced to indulge in these moral panics because of the degeneration of the system – but the same crisis deprives politicians of the moral authority to run such campaigns. It’s not that most politicians are more corrupt, inefficient or hypocritical than in the past; or the royal family less self-seeking and out of touch; or the church practices less of what it preaches. It is just that when the society they preside over is in a cul-de-sac, those they rule lose confidence in them.
In the MORI poll of young people quoted above, teachers, doctors and parents were at the top of the list of people setting a good moral standard. At the bottom were politicians, government ministers, national newspapers, the royal family, television, advertising, pop stars, top business leaders and the courts. In other words the very groups who pontificate most about morals have least credibility.
Ultimately, in so far as they conceal the real nature of social problems, moral panics can be disorientating. However, since the 1980s there have been endless campaigns by the right on abortion, single parents and juvenile crime. All had very little effect on social attitudes, which have continued to move to the left.
The ideas behind moral panics conflict with the experience of working class people. They may confuse the situation temporarily but they can’t stabilise society or hold back the struggle indefinitely. A socialist alternative has to be fought for based on community provision of the basics of life and social services under democratic control, including assistance, not punishment, for those who feel they can’t cope.
The working class and those prepared to oppose the capitalist system have to work out an alternative economic policy which doesn’t take the limits of capitalism as its starting point and construct an alternative morality which is not based on maintaining the power and privileges of a minority but on solidarity, on collective action, to solve common problems.
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