NOW PRISON REFORMERS PRAISE THE GUARDS

If there is one thing the middle-class reformers hate and fear - even more than the wrongs they try to right - it is the thought of the over. throw of the capitalist system in which they play the role of loyal protesters.

Such an organization is the Howard League for Penal Reform. Not that it hasn't done some sterling work in connection with trying to humanize an institution which is basically meant to be inhuman. Certainly it has played some part in bringing to light some of the worst aspects of the prison system and in agitating against such barbarities as hanging and flogging.

But prisoners in the jails all around the country are trying now to improve their own conditions. And their uprisings are part of the whole growing struggle of working people to get rid of this oppressive Tory government and defend their basic rights.

The Howard League is getting agitated. Its latest Newsletter points out, quite rightly, that prisons are overcrowded and that the government's solution is to build more prisons rather than to undertake any reforms. would like information abou However, in spite of the allegations by some prisoners that the protest demonstrations were sparked off by prison staff determined to show their charges who is boss, the Howard Leaguers praise the warders for handling the situation 'with considerable forbearance . . . which has fortunately prevented ugly incidents'.

The real motive for their concern comes out, however, when they complain that 'many offenders see "the system" as being frequently just bloodyminded. It is on this level as much as the ethical, that safeguards for the accused should be debated: A real objection to tampering with the Judges' Rules is that it makes offenders more cynical and anti-social than before. This can neutralize any deterrent, not to mention rehabilitative, effects of sentences.

In other words, the real objection to the Tory proposals to take away from arrested people every civil right which has been fought for in the past, putting them entirely at the mercy of the police, is not the suffering involved and the increased dangers of innocent people being railroaded into the jails. It is that some prisoners might turn angrily against 'the system' itself.

And, of course, from hating the system to taking action Top: 170 prisoners Joined this rooftop protest at Peterhead jail, Aberdeenshire. against it is just one short step—but it is a step which could upset all the comfortable, middle-class ways of the penal reformers.

Unfortunately for the Howard League, however, the Tories are not going to listen to mere pleas. ' They are out for a confrontation with the working class and they intend to use the police and jails to try to intimidate those militants who dare to stand up for their rights.

The reactionary campaigns being waged on law and order or the cha the got the Judges' Rules, but also to harsher sentences and even the possibility of a return to hanging and flogging.

There can be no fight for prison reform, or to defend any working-class rights, without a fight to defeat the Tory government.

The mass of working-class prisoners, who are often driven to petty-crime out of desperation, anger and frustration, cannot fight it out in the jails. Their struggle is part of the growing movement in the working class as a whole to force the Tories to resign.

But it is just that movement which scares the pants off the Howard Leaguers.

Soclailst Labour League LECTURES THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MAR given by G. HEALY