(Militant No. 1, October 1964 p. 7, of course we wouldn’t use the N-word today)
Peter Taaffe
Walton YS
If the king of Prussia once said of his peasant army, “We are lost once the bayonets begin to think,” then the capitalist class and their mouthpieces in the press must repeat this a thousand times in relation to young people of today.
Plaudits are heaped on Dr. George Simpson, the Margate magistrate, who said of the young people paraded before him, “You are the dregs of the vermin who infested the town;” all manner of social quacks rush forward with their “explanations” – too much money, lack of discipline, etc.
Any and every argument is valid so long as youth violence is not related to the social system. Even “The Times” descended from its lofty perch to inform us that “boys clubs” are the real answer to the problem.
Behind the vicious denunciations and subtle explanations is concealed a real fear of young people by the bosses. Although Mods and rockers comprise only a minority, they nevertheless reflect the conflict of our generation with corrupt Tory society.
The youth hauled before a magistrate at Hastings and fined £50 cannot fail to understand the hypocrisy of Tory elder statesmen who mouth phrases about “good citizenship.” He will contrast pompous moralising with the hate, greed and violence which are the very symbols of Tory society.
The punch-ups at Easter, Whitsun and August are child’s play to the organised violence of the Rachmans and gangster landlords, the hooliganism of the government with its priority for nuclear weapons, carrying with it vast profits for the Ferranti’s of this world, and the waste of young workers on the dole, condemned to fritter away their talents in enforced idleness.
We do not condone violence or hooliganism, but to those in the labour movement who dismiss the bank holiday clashes as such, we ask them to look at the cause not the effect.
The Puerto-Rican and Negro gangs who battle with each other in the slums of New York are no different from the Mods and Rockers here. Their “battles” are blown up by the American press, just as Fleet Street set-up the south coast fracas involving a few hundred young people.
The press tycoons sell more papers and make more profits; the stories encourage other bored youngsters to join the gangs and ape their styles. The dance-hall owners, the dope peddlers and the vendors of cheap clothes also make more profits.
Only the youngsters themselves make nothing; they are merely the source of the exploitation.
Violence is rooted in the system we live in. When young people react in a wild, frenzied way against society they are condemned, fined and imprisoned.
But, as the “Daily Express” was quick to point out at Easter, while these “hooligans” are beating up a few jaded sea-side resorts, other young people are doing a fine job for “their” country in Aden and Malaysia and Cyprus.
To bomb defenceless villages and shoot poor peasants is all right, as far as the press and their owners are concerned. Organised, planned violence is OK when it aimed to defend the interests and profits of the big oil companies.
The main concern of the magistrates who fined the Mods and Rockers was with the damage done to private property; they were less concerned with the fact that the brief holidays of some working-class families had been disrupted.
But property is all in Tory Britain. The mail train robbers received sentences far more vicious than those meted out to Nazi war criminals. The Nazis only murdered people!
Young Socialists should explain these facts to young workers who provide cheap entertainment for the jeering spectators in Fleet Street.
We can and must win to our movement these young people who unconsciously react with violence to the deadening blind alley of capitalism.
To do this does not mean, as some Young Socialists think, pandering to the backwardness of some young workers. It means transforming their negative, fratricidal struggles into a clear-cut fight against the bosses and their system.
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