Property and theft

children, David (6) and Michelle (5).

klddies.' WE HAVE come to Blackpool for the last four years with the children, but I used to come before that as a girl. The main thing that has changed here are the prices, things are ridiculously dear now, especially the rides for the kiddies.

We were going to Morecambe, but then someone told us that the sands were all mud there and we didn't like the sound of that. This year we're going into a flat for the first time, we've not even been there yet, I hope it's OK.

One of the reasons for this was because we weren't getting enough food in the boarding house. MR ROWBOTHAM THESE KIND of holidays are mainly for the kiddies, when they get to bed our real holiday starts. We go out for a drink or to a show. I like Blackpool because you can always find something to do and you meet other people like yourself. We will mix with anyone so long as they are friendly.

I take about four weeks off work all told. But there's short time in • the textile industry now and we have a lot of 'unofficial' holidays I'd rather do without. IN ONE of the 'quality' Sunday newspapers, nestling under the serious book reviews, is an avidly-read column reviewing the latest thrillers. It's called 'Crime Ration'.

In two , words it offers the British middle class a shattering glimpse of itself as it really is. first their itch for violence, hysteria and extravagance; their burning, servile desire to be one of the 'big boys"; but brought to heel immediately by the traditional sense of propriety, prudence, moderation; the civilized rationing of all excess.

Evidently journalism for the successful middle class is the same as for skilled massage - first stimulate, then soothe. • Ot over 300,000 serious crimes for which persons were convicted in 1968, 91.8 per cent were against property. Most of them, of course, were not successful.

But whether it pays or not, crime has a definite power to fascinate. It's a shiny thread woven into the fabric of class society; examining it one can see many of the tensions in the rest of the weave.

Crime directly attacks the property of the exploiter, getting behind his bars and locks to grasp the most sensitive spot of Exciting What makes crime exciting is not violence or suspense, but something more fundamental—it cracks a living fissure in the sick, dead. calm which is capitalism's everyday appearance. Crime is a perpetual opposite of private But at the same time, the aim of the criminal is ... to get Crime merely introduces a further form of appropriation, so to speak. It turns the criminal into his opposite. For he starts out as the enemy of bourgeois wealth, but the more successful he is as a criminal, the more does he become a man of property.

The lawyer would quibble and say it is not his property, only his possession.

DURING the seven-week struggle of 11,000 General and Municipal Workers' members earlier this year, which has now broken out afresh at the heart of Sir Harry Pilkington's St Helens empire, thousands of glassworkers found themselves fighting not only the employer, but the full force of the union.

It did not back the strike and the unofficial leaders later formed the Glass and General Workers' Union.

During the post-war period the GMWU has shown a tendency to decline.

Following the Ford strike of early 1969, the Halewood branch was closed when workers moved en masse into the Transport and General Workers' Union.

The GMWU was formed just before the 1926 General Strike as the result of various amalgamations and built up its membership during the depression, in the aftermath of working-class defeats which preceded the Second World War.

FATHER TO SON It developed to its present size of just under 800,000 members with a leadership which has almost been handed down from father to son.

Lord Cooper, the present general secretary, has worked for the union since the age of 20 in 1928. His mother came from the family of Lord Dukes, general secretary of the union for most of the pre-war period.

Cooper is a governor of the London school of Business Studies and director of Telefusion Yorkshire and the National Ports Council.

Cooper's predecessor Lord Williamson worked for the union since the age of 14. His uncle was Liverpool district Lord Williamson is a director (along with former Labour minister Ray Gunter) of Securicor, the guardians de luxe of private property and, of late, immigrant workers at London Airport. Borsalino directed by Jacques Deray, starring Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Right). Paramount Cinema, London.

But the practical bourgeois, who understands that the fist comes before books, knows that possession 1s ninety-nine point: of the law. What he has he keeps. and he expects others to do likewise.

Both classes in capitalist society can see something of themselves in the criminal.

This is what underlies the absorption some artists feel in the 'crime for its own sake'.

For modern French playwright Genet, the thief is a subjective hero, in no way calculating his crimes for gain; the police are his enemy, but at the same time his whole emotional life hangs on the threat they hold over him.

And on other levels, crime holds up a mirror to all men.

The capitalist cannot but identify with the burglar, the extortionist, the racketeer; they are merely speeded-up versions of himself.

Punishment

And at the thought of their punishment, anticipating the historical fate which he senses for himself, a shiver goes down his spine.

For the working class, the criminal cocks a snook at property - but property remains. Crime can exist only as the exception, where private wealth is the rule.

Each particular robbery is a crevice in the permanent, legalized larceny of class exploitation.

But the social contradiction contained within crime cannot be resolved through crime.

The task of the working class is not to open more cracks, but to abolish exploitation-and thus to put an end to crime in that form.

And the middle class, above all, recognize in the criminal their own ambition, instability, their own individualism and their fundamental lack of independence...

More than any other, the middle classes are the criminal classes. It is probably because films and writing are so much in middle-class hands that crime is such a popular theme.

'Borsalino' is one of the better ones among such films.

Whatever shortcomings it may have its criminals are emphatically social animals. officer involved in the Pilkington strike, is the son of a Liverpool district organizer and the grandson of a Manchester official of the union.

Lord Williamson's opinion of militancy was expressed in the House of Lords in March last year in the following terms:

"The sort of anarchy we have recently witnessed can be highly contagious, and it could be quite dangerous if it is shown to be paying divid(behind THE NEWS of Pilkington glassworkers Two small-time Italian wide boys come together in Marseilles in the 1930s.

From small jobs they progress to bigger ones, learning as they go along.

They kidnap a racehorse, but lose the fee backing the wrong A rigged boxing-match backfires. ' Then a fish dealer hires them to drive his rivals out and let him monopolize the markets and —with the aid of rotten fish and cats—they are on their way.

What they have they spend, but now they are rubbing shoulders with the big rackets. Marseilles and its pickings are divided between two major organizations.

Drugs, bars, brothels, protection rackets yield their regular tithes, with the police and the politicians turning a blind eye.

Respectability, as they say, is essentially a : matter of scale. Almost by chance one of the heroes goes off with the girl of a big operator.

He gets a working-over and the battle is on. Through massacre, arson, bravery and cunning Union ends • . . My Lords, no unofficial strike is ever justified.' In their written evidence to the Donovan Commission in 1967, the union leaders made much of their 'good' strike record since 1926. Between 1958 and 1964, the union paid out an average per year on strike pay of £17,500—less, according to one estimate, than it spent on cars for its The GMWU has always strived for closed-shop agreements with the employers. they take over the city in a series of bloody scenes.

At the summit, all the rich pickings are theirs.

Like capitalism itself; they have come dripping with blood into their property.

Belmondo and Alain Delon, as they move up the ladder, blend more and more into the social circles of the rich, donning dinner jackets and moving easily in the casino and the cocktail party. They are on familiar terms with the police chief.

The leading local politician who lacks nothing in realism through his vivid resemblance to President Pompidou-makes his peace with them, as he did with the gangsters they have removed.

They remain thugs, but they travel first class. And, above all, they acquire the social graces.

Much more could have been made of the film.

Under Jacques Deray's direction Belmondo and Delon are not stretched at all. Their faces are almost unemployed.

Only because they (and especially Belmondo) have the ability to express, without any apparent expression, a whole mood and situation, do they come alive.

The bosses have been happy to agree to this state of affairs, being well aware of the union leadership's record.

As Brian Woodward, an official of the newly-formed Glassworkers' Union, commented:

*They [Pilkingtons) have had a happy relationship with the GMWU for years.. A closed. shop can be a good thing, but in our case it was a bad thing' This type of agreement was very much in the minds of the Labour leaders when they were formulating their proposals for trade union 'reform'.

In return for 100 per cent trade union membership, the union leaders were intended to As soon as the pair can afford it they adopt permanent cigarsmoking. The brown cylinders become part of their faces.

In whole sequences - during violent gunfights - they seem to communicate entirely by laconic waggling of the cigars.

Satisfying

The colour is rich and satisfying. Marseilles comes alive as a Mediterranean Chicago.

Inevitably, there is a slavish attention to the heroes' new-found luxury, but you always see the muscles under the hide. crimine osed be need at criminal (and other) 'types' could be discovered by phrenology (analysing the shape of their skulls).

What congenital burglars (defined by their bumps) got up to before the appearance of private property was left unexplained.

'Borsalino' is a film to knock such theories on the head (so to speak) once and for all. It is not a great film, but much better than the usual run of gangster movies.

discipline militants, using the threat of the sack which would follow expulsion from The Tory government could well overcome its hatred of the 'closed shop', in order to strengthen its proposals for boosting the authority of the union bureaucracy.

The GMWU also supports the collections of union subscriptions by employers. The reason given to the Donovan Commission is in line with its support for the 'closed-shop' principle.

"There is no need, in the interests of maintaining membership, for shop stewards to demonstrate hostility towards management as a method of convincing members of the value of trade unionism.' Elections in the union are at a minimum. The branch administrative officers replacing branch secretaries since 1965-are full-time officials appointed by the general secretary 'after consultation'. This applies to all officials, who serve a probationary period of two years before being elected to the job for life.

In addition, under union rules, the National Executive Committee can prevent any candidate standing for office if it considers that he is not 'capable of discharging efficiently • the duties of office'.

The explosion in St Helens, however, is not just an isolated struggle against an employer and an 'unshakeable' union bureaucracy. To view it in this way is to plump for the 'pure' trade union solution and to court disaster.

The fight for democratization of the unions today takes place in a period of capitalist crisis and working-class offensive-a political clash which is shaking the labour bureaucracies to their foundations.

The fight for Marxist leadership is therefore at the centre of the glassworkers' struggle and the rejection of non-political syndicalism.