SOCIALIST UNITY

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The Prison Officers Association has always been a contradictory beast.

So at their conference this week, national chairman Colin Moses attacked 10 years of new Labour’s broken promises, warning Prime Minister Tony Blair that he “should be ashamed of himself.”

Moses told delegates that the government had treated the POA with “derision” since it came to power, and he pointed out that Gordon Brown, who had attacked officers’ wages, was unlikely to give the union its trade union rights back when he becomes Prime Minister. “Enough is enough. We must demonstrate that this union has a voice and it must be heard. …. We will continue to campaign and we will take our fight to Europe, the government and the TUC. We will join with other unions for justice and fairness.”

He also pointed out, in reference to the government’s increasing use of the private sector to run Britain’s jails, that “public services should not be run for profit.”

So far so good, this is normal trade unionism, indeed the POA is backing the RMT initiated national Shop Stewards Network, with its next conference in July.

But the POA also represents those in the front end of enforcing the repressive role of the state, and often has less than enlightened views about prisoners’ rights.

The week POA conference attacked the government’s decision to allow prisoners to smoke in their cells once the smoking ban in public places and at work comes into effect on July 1 in England and Wales.

The POA complains that the exemption gives prisoners more rights than prison officers. Staff at Wakefield’s maximum-security prison were banned from smoking last year when it became the first to introduce a clean-air policy. Warders cannot smoke anywhere in the jail, but prisoners are still allowed to light up in their cells.

General secretary Brian Caton told conference that prisoners should not be allowed to smoke in jail. “They have broken the law and been sent to prison as a result. That was their choice and they knew the consequences of their actions … Prisons are not hotels and it is wrong that prison staff are being treated like second-class citizens.”

The equation by the POA is entirely false that it is unfair that prisoners can smoke while staff cannot. Staff can nip outside for a smoke, and can go home each day.

It is important that prisoners have as much control over decisions about their own life and welfare as possible, this is necessary for self-esteem. As long as smoking is legal in wider society, then it should be legal for prisoners.

The difficultly is that the shift in social attitudes towards smoking has led to a widespread exaggerated misunderstanding of the real risk of second hand smoke, which has fed into the POA’s attitude. This is the government’s fault as they have colluded in exaggerating the understanding of risk in order to promote an otherwise laudable public policy objective.

The balance struck by anti-smoking legislation itself is correct over this issue, but the way that the public debate was conducted in an atmosphere of moral panic has created an issue of potentially serious friction between prisoners and staff.

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Last night I was talking to the manager of a sheltered housing project which homes vulnerable young people, often with mental health issues, many of whom have difficulty socialising after experiencing abuse, and in some cases are asylum seekers.

New Labour’s ill conceived smoking ban is shortly going to have a serious negative impact on these vulnerable young people. (Thanks to one of the comments to this post, I have checked the legislatioon, and residential care homes where nursing or personal care is provided are exempt, but sheltered accomodation is covered by the act.)

Let’s be clear. I have no problem with a restriction of smoking in public places to provide non-smokers with the opportunity to live without being exposed to smoke. The problem is that New Labour have removed all choice, and not allowed premises that provide a choice for smokers. The cheerleaders for this ban seek to impose their own lifestyle choices onto others by law.

Residential housing projects have been categorised as public places under the act, and must enforce it or face a £2500 fine and a criminal record for staff members. The stupidity of the law has already led to a one year delay in its implementation into mental hospitals, but sheltered housing projects have to implement it from 1st July 2007.

Currently these homes have a smoking ban in the bedrooms, and provide two lounges: one for smokers, and one for non smokers. This is now illegal.

Bear in mind that these premises are home for their residents. Not only are they entitled to smoke if the wish in their own home but in fact most do smoke. Smoking rates are highest in the most socially marginalised parts of society, and to be honest the potential health risks of smoking are often the least of their problems.

Under the new law, the smoking lounges must be shut, and the bedrooms must now be used for smoking. So all that has happened under New Labour’s brilliant law, cheered on by so many on the left, is that the smoke has moved from one part of the building to another.

But this is not a change with neutral impact. There is now an increased fire risk, as it is much more likely that there will be a blaze from someone falling asleep in bed with a cigarette. What is more, the smoking lounges created a degree of socialisation for vulnerable and excluded people, who will now be sitting alone in their tiny bedrooms. It gets worse, the bedrooms are small, and my friend advises me that because soft furnishings absorb the smoke and stink, the rooms will gradually have the soft furniture, carpets and curtains removed, to be replaced with hard chairs, laminate floors and Venetian blinds. This is the austere environment that the New labour zealots wish to push vulnerable people, because the Islington dinner party set don’t approve of smoking, and wish to criminalise and exclude anyone who doesn’t agree with their choices.

The anti-smoking zealots said they supported a total ban on (specious) health and safety grounds, ignoring all evidence about the efficacy of extraction systems in removing any risk from second hand smoke. But for the most vulnerable in care homes, the smoking lounges had extraction systems, but the bedrooms will not. So for the most vulnerable and at risk the situation is worse.

The class bias of the legislation is also clear froom the fact that smoking is banned in the expensive nurseries where middle class parents can afford to send their children, but not in the homes of child minders where working class children go. An egalitarian approach would have insisted instead on air extraction systems for child minders’ homes, and subsidised their installation and running costs. Parental choice is an inadeqaute solution, partly because the choices people can make depend on their income, and partly becasue parents who smoke are less likely to object to a child minder who smokes.

How any socialist can support this vindictive, class-biased legislation is beyond me.

Of course common sense could have prevailed and sheltered housing could have been excluded from the legistlation, but then so could private clubs. Instead a blanket ban is being imposed as a knee jerk, socially repressive measure.

2007 will see a smoking ban introduced in public buildings in England. Most significantly, no provision is allowed for private clubs who may wish to allow smoking.

As a cigar smoker myself, I am acutely aware of the degree of moral hysteria surrounding this issue, where there has been an intertwining of public health concerns (often based upon exagerated misinformation), and an acceptance of the basic principle that the government should legislate against behaviour regarded as anti-social.

On the public health issue, some otherwise sane people lose all sense of proportion over the dangers of second hand smoke. As social animals living in collective, industrial societies we are exposed to constant diverse health risks due to the activities of others – traffic fumes, industrial waste gases, pollen, food additives – second hand tobacco smoke is only one of many.

And the evidence of health dangers from second hand smoke are presumptive projections that are not empirically established. Everyone understands that buying a lottery ticket doesn’t mean you will win the lottery, and in the same way slight exposure to second hand smoke does not necessarily pose any significant health risk. Public policy considerations need to balance an actual assessment of risk, against the requirement that individuals must be able to make their own choices, not idealise a risk-free environment that can never exist.

What is more, the ban on private clubs allowing smoking was allegedly based upon the entirely specious hokum of health concerns for bar workers. But cigarette smoke is measured at around 1 micron, whereas a good extraction system will remove particulates down to about 1/3 micron. Good air circulation will also dilute and disperse any gaseous components, so that a smoking environment with air purification can be cleaner than a non smoking environment without extraction. I have worked in factories where much more toxic substances than cigarette smoke are handled, and appropriate extraction systems can and do provide a safe working environment.

Had the health issue been the genuine cause of concern then legislation could have enforced extraction systems, and other measures. But the real issue is that people support the ban because they think smoking is anti-social – “why should I breathe your smoke?” Now to a certain degree this is sensible, and a choice of non-smoking and smoking venues should be provided. But of course a choice has precisely not been allowed in the current legislation.

This is what ties the smoking issue into the wider politics of New Labour, with its preoccupations about anti-social behaviour. Or more specifically, using legislation to enforce arbitrary social preferences of the majority against minorities, in order to enforce shared community of values.

For example, Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) are, to the best of my knowledge, an internationally unique form of legislation because they do not criminalise specific behaviours, but rather any arbitrary behaviour that anyone else find anti-social, provided a magistrate agrees: then if you breach the order the behaviour is criminal. The only international precedent for this form of legislation I have been able to find (and this is not just a cheap shot) is Himmler’s proposed legislation of 1944 against Gemeinschaftsfremde. (Community aliens). This was more liberal than New Labour’s law, because it required a compulsory referral to social workers before imprisonment if the Nazi equivalent of an ASBO was breached, and only proposed prison if social work referral failed. Interestingly Himmler’s law was not enacted as both the German judiciary and the police opposed it for being unworkable and in principle contrary to natural justice to imprison people for arbitrary anti-social behaviour.

It is no coincidence that the Nazis were also the first country to ban smoking. A myth is propagated by today’s anti-smoking campaigners that the Nazi ban was racially inspired due to Jewish influence in the tobacco industry, and therefore different to their own campaigns. This is entirely false, the concerns of the Nazis were exactly the same issues of public health, and even echoed leftist criticisms of smoking that tobacco comapanies were making profits at the expense of public health. The 1944 national ban on smoking on public transport was personally initiated by Hitler over the issue of passive smoking risks, and Nazi scientists Franz H Muller (in 1939) and Eberhard Schairer and Erich Schoniger (in 1943) were the first to publish good research demonstrating provable links between smoking and lung cancer.

The question is whether the state should restrict choice in order to enfoirce healthy living. The anti-smoking campaigners, (including the Nazis!) believe the state should play this interventionist role - and the spurious arguments about second hand smoke are a stalking horse for their full agenda, which is to ban smoking altogether.

Now clearly New Labour are not Nazis. But there is a tendency within New Labour that shares the Nazi ideology of communitarianism. This was expressed by the Nazis in terms of Volksgemeinschaft – a national community with shared values that were rather arbitrary (for example, against swing music and English style clothes). The logic of New Labour is “triangulation” around the issues that affect swing voters, to win electioons at any cost. As seen in the 2005 Hodge Hill by-election this can lead Labour to conduct a basically far-right election campaign, pandering to the prejudices of voters, in echo of Thatcher’s defence of “people like us”.

Nor was this an aberration, Liam Byrne the victorious labour candidate is an affirmed Blairite who is now immigration minister! You can view all his election material here. Labour decided to contest this marginal working class constituency on the issues of opposing immigration, and authoritarian measures against anti-social behaviour. More recently we have seen New Labour orchestrate a moral scare about Moslem women wearing a veil – largely demonising people because they are different from the arbitrary values of the majority.

I have argued elsewhere about the changes in the Labour Party: “the Labour Party has a broadly progressive electoral constituency, and historical links with the trade union infrastructure, but it is in continued antagonism with both of these elements. Nevertheless, although the Party no longer articulates the aspirations of these support groups, they do provide a constraint upon it, and mediate the transformation of the Labour Party, so that it appears less dramatic than it is.” The important point here is that the electoral support of Labour is broadly to the left of the party over a number of issues, such as the Iraq war, opposition to privatisation, support for trade unions, etc. But New Labour also know that on the issues of race and immigration, and social conformity, they can mobilise their electoral base around a right wing communitarian agenda.

Interestingly, no voice within the Labour party distanced itself from the far-right campaign in Hodge Hill. There does need to be a serious debate about whether socialists should be more actively arguing for opposition to Labour and union disaffiliation from the Labour Party, given its irreversible shift to being a neo-liberal authoritarian party.

It is in this context that New Labour have introduced the smoking ban, and ban on hunting with dogs - because they believe it is a defensible role of the state to legislate to enforce the preferred choices of the majority, even where the minority activity does not harm other people. This is whipped up by moral scares, and ill-informed arguments.

Unfortunately many on the left do not realise that we have to defend the rights of all minority activities that do not inherently harm other people, even those who make life-style choices different from our own,

Well as you know yesterday the government voted for a blanket ban on smoking i n pubs and clubs. Before I go into my political position on this let me start by explaining my personal vantage point. I have nearly all my life been a non-smoker. Recently i decided i like the odd cigar when go out to pubs (a bit fucking poncy i know) but this has not really effected my position.

To be honest i think the government has gone overboard - and that the actual aim of the decision was to move towards a de facto ban on smoking (ie a society in which it is so uncomfortable and annoying to be a smoker that people stop). We all know that smoking is bad for your health. Yet it is - or at least can be - a pleasurably activity. We are constantly faced with decisions where we have to balance the need to protect our health against pleasure. Drinking as much as I did last night was probably not good for me healthwise but i made a decision that the enjoyment i got out of getting fucked outweighed - for me - the damage i may be doing to my liver. A similar argument applies to smoking. In fact i find the idea that each cigarette takes 20 seconds off your life quite appealing - it means if I smoke a whole pack i’ll probably shit myself one less time before i die. Of course smoking and drinking are not completely equivalent - most obviously second hand smoke can damage your health. What this means is not that we need a blanket ban of smoking of deference to non-smokers but instead that we need to provide opprotunites both for people who choose to smoke and those who do not to enjoy themselves. We could for example liscense a certain number of smoking pubs for each locality hwile keeping the others smoke free. This is similar to the way things worked on trains with smoking cars. To be honest I do not understand why we no longer have smoking cars. In fact I do understand - it’s because the neo puritans pushing all of these restrictions are hiding behind the passive smoking argument. The reality is that they cannot bear wto see people choosing to harm their health and regard it as their right to intervene.