See other articles:
- the Solidarity 3/143 article on the Baby P case, and the criticism of it, to which this is a reply;
- Haringey; why the "business model" didn't work, by Pauline Bradley, from Solidarity 3/142.
Suppose a man from far away, and with a shaky grip on the English language, picked up a copy of the last Solidarity and read my article on the "Baby P" case. Suppose he hadn't seen the previous issue, with Pauline Bradley's article. He might possibly conclude from what I wrote there - "a narrow trade unionist response to this terrible event — rallying round to defend the social workers involved — is ruled out by the nature of the work they did" - "Ah, he doesn't like trade unions: he doesn't want the workers he is writing about to have trade union rights, at least not in this case."
If the visitor from far away didn't know that the workers involved had collective responsibility as a social services department - however blame is to be apportioned to individuals - for letting his mother and her friends kill the child, he might add: the writer is hostile to workers, or anyway to social workers.
I'm at a loss to understand how people who are not from far away, who ordinarily have a good command of English, and who know or can see from the paper in their hands or from the website the general politics of Solidarity, make the reading they make.
Amongst the odd things is the way the nonsensical reading of what I wrote has passed from person to person who has a taste for sounding off - and got more distorted and more distant from what I actually wrote as it progressed from person to person.
"Narrow trade unionist response"
The defining words in what I wrote were "narrow trade unionist response". Not trade union, but trade unionist. Not trade unionist, but narrow trade unionist. "Exclusively trade unionist", or "limited to trade-union concerns", would have carried the same sense.
The point of the qualifying word "narrow" is to separate "narrow trade unionist responses" from the proper concerns of trade unions in defending their members, and from trade unionism as such.
A "narrow trade unionist response" here would be one rooted in and defined by reflex defence of the social workers who run the system - letting narrow concern with that defence limit our response to "Baby P" and to the general problem of abuse of children which was, yet again, highlighted by the case. It would limit us to what could be generalised from that proper but limited and limiting concern with the "corporate" interests of the social workers. The critics themselves provide a rich crop of examples of what a "narrow trade unionist" response is.
With the very first sentence, I left open the question of who exactly was responsible and the different degrees of responsibility: "Whoever is to be blamed, and however the degrees of blame are to be portioned out..."
Certainly I don't know. I made no claim to know. It is yet to be established. I did not attempt to evaluate where within the Haringey social services department blame, or different degrees of blame, lay. I have no basis for making such an assessment. The general features of the heavily bureaucratic system there had been assessed in a longer piece in the previous issue of Solidarity, by Pauline Bradley.
I repeated that point, in similar words - "however the blame should finally be apportioned..." - in the third paragraph -
"A narrow trade-unionist response to this terrible event — rallying round to defend the social workers involved — is ruled out by the nature of the work they did, in which (to repeat, however the blame should finally be apportioned) they failed utterly. Here, a narrow trade-unionist response would be the opposite of a socialist response. What happened is beyond excusing or excuse-making. Those responsible should be called to account and removed from such work. Everyone, from the case workers, to their supervisors..."
Everyone responsible, not everyone in the social services connected to the case.
Sack the social workers?
"Those responsible" - something that has yet to be established, and should not be established by Sun-type howling for blood - should be called to account, and removed from such work. Not sacked. If I'd meant to say "sacked", I'd have said "sacked" or "dismissed". Those workers are part of a very large bureaucracy. They could be "removed from such work" into other jobs, though not jobs involving responsibility for children.
I did not say that the social workers should be sacked. I insisted that "the press outcry against Haringey social services department should not be allowed to determine what is done now". I criticised the Government minister involved for letting the outcry do that. Least of all did I suggest that the social worker who pressed for "Baby P" to be taken into care should be summarily sacked or removed.
(However, to speak hypothetically, if it could be shown that the only choices were either to sack some social workers, or to fail the children, perhaps fatally, who in the camp of the critics of what I wrote would be willing to say that stopping the social workers being sacked was more important than anything else? If you think that, say it! Put up, or shut up! Note for those who have difficulty with English: I say "if", which means "for the sake of argument, assume it were so...")
A considerable part of the denunciation has hung on complaining that I didn't say this, or I should have say that. It was a short comment piece, much shorter than Pauline Bradley's previous article. Given the limited scope of the article, criticism based on what I didn't say in that article (but might well be included in a comprehensive coverage) is arbitrary. "You didn't mention that" is frequently the shoddiest form of polemic. It offers endless scope for agitation, and is, I suppose, a flaccid species of power without responsibility.
The feeling in what I wrote, the underlying emotion, may be what comrades are "really" picking up on: the attitude that there is no room, because of the nature of the thing, for patience, pettifogging, excuse-making, caveat-mongering, for a main or exclusive focus on defending the social workers, for mechanically responding to press vigilantism with an attempt to "talk down" the importance of the murder of the child. "The bottom line is that 'Baby P' was killed after a horrific 18 month life, during all or most of which he was repeatedly beaten and physically injured".
That is what I meant to convey by distancing myself from "narrow trade unionism" before I went on to attack the Sun, etc. If there is real disagreement, it is against that basic attitude that it should be directed.
But who amongst the participants in the discussion, is willing in plain language to say we should let our attitude to this terrible case, and to the whole massive problem of the ill-treatment and often the killing of children in Britain now (three killed a day, according to figures just published), be determined by "narrow trade-unionist " attitudes, that is, defined by the immediate job interests of the workers involved? Who for that matter is willing to say that those held responsible after a proper inquiry should not be removed from such work?
Will anyone say that our overall attitude should be extrapolated from, or defined by, the trade union concerns of the workers involved, who collectively — "whoever is to be blamed, and however the degrees of blame are to be portioned out" — do bear responsibility for letting what happened happen?
Who is prepared to argue seriously that no blame should be apportioned?
There is, of course, a problem about what we would consider a "proper inquiry". Who "in authority" could we trust to deliver judgement? Maybe we should demand a trade-union inquiry. But in general, however it is done, the death should be investigated properly, and where there is proof that someone is culpable, they should be called to account.
The social worker who proposed taking the child into care
Plainly, if — as did happen, so I understand — a social worker recommended taking the baby into care, then the weight of responsibility swings heavily on to her superiors who over-ruled her. Generally, lower-rank social workers are likely to be overruled by higher-rank people, and those higher-rank people must take more of the blame.
Even here, however, the question is posed by the outcome for the child: should someone who knew, or had a general idea, of what was happening to the child, have acquiesced? Was enough done? Why wasn't the whistle blown on what was happening, including the refusal of her superiors to do what she thought necessary?
I don't know the answers here, but in the circumstances these too are important questions, and should be asked.
Of course it is easy to be absolute and decisive from the outside, and after the terrible fate of the child is known. Indeed, and one should avoid cheap attitudinising, or thoughtless retrospective demands on people to have acted heroically in a situation where they, unlike us, did not know the outcome of not doing that.
That is one reason why the howling of the Sun and other such is intolerable.
But I'll tell you what I am also not prepared to do: line up behind defending the social worker trade unionists, and forget the "bottom line [that] Baby P was tortured and killed". I am not prepared to let opposition to press vigilante-mongering push me into denying that collectively the social services department does have responsibility, or into saying that the fate of the child (and, of course, other children: it is not merely an inconsequential after-the-fact dispute) is less important than to the defence of the trade unionists involved.
Here we, as socialists, are not just trade unionists. Our response cannot be "narrow trade-unionist response". And, as on many other things, we are not just a negative imprint of the bourgeois press. We have to respond as socialists: to uphold our own independent socialist viewpoint and values against both the press and "narrow trade-unionist" responses.
We cannot be only trade unionists
Of course we are and must continue to be trade unionists, concerned and engaged with defending workers and helping workers defend themselves.
Trade unions and trade union attitudes are the bedrock of the labour movement, the purveyors here and now of that working class solidarity that is the class-based precursor of the general human solidarity of the future socialist society. Nonetheless, trade unionism and trade union attitudes, even the broadest and least "narrow", are not socialism. As the article said, in this case a narrow and exclusive focus on the trade-unionist concerns of the workers involved would be the opposite of socialism.
Of course we must be for their trade union defending its members in this terrible case as in all others. That's what a good trade union, in such cases like a good lawyer, does: make the best possible case for its members. All the more importantly so in this case where, as I said, the apportioning of blame and responsibility can not easily be made.
For socialists — repeat: for socialists as socialists, and writing in a socialist publication — narrowly-defined trade unionism is not enough. It cannot be the be-all-and-end-all, where the "object" of the work done by the trade unionists in question is children who have to depend on them for protection from ill-treatment - or, in the case of "Baby P", from being gruesomely tortured over most of his 18-month life and murdered. We cannot derive our attitude to the major social issues here just by extrapolation from the trade-unionist concerns of the workers involved.
To view this case solely or mainly from the position of defending, come what may, and irrespective of the "details", the trade unionists involved, would be both de-humanising, and anti-socialist. It would substitute for our socialist overview - within which we situate our trade-unionism - a narrow corporatism or sectionalism. It would be a gruesome caricature of the one-sided role which trade unions have to play in a capitalist society.
The worker is never wrong?
There is a small irony in this discussion, in that in "normal" trade union situations I would take the attitude - though I wouldn't quite put it like that - that the worker is never wrong.
In most "work situations", say in a car factory, we say the trade unions should not take responsibility for the running of the factory or the "disciplining" of the workers. They should not concern themselves with whether or not the work is done competently, or with whether the worker gives the employer good work. If we are strong enough, we demand workers' control of hiring and firing.
In reality other workers exert a strong pressure on everyone to "pull their weight"; and for sure we don't advocate sabotage. But it makes no difference to us whether or not a worker up for discipline over poor work is guilty or innocent of the charge. In conflicts between the worker and the boss about standards and competence, trade unions pursue, or anyway should pursue, a "narrow" trade unionism and relate to the "job situation" as entirely partisan defenders of the workers being exploited there, without regard to the overall working of the factory, the industry or the overall economy.
In a case like that of "Baby P" and the Haringey social services, can we have the same attitude? No, we can't! Here we can not but be concerned with the outcome of the work, as well as with our normal trade unionist concerns to defend and champion the workers.
For example, we have in the past advocated that civil service workers going on strike should make special provision for unemployed workers dependent on the Giros they sent out. We rejected a "narrow trade-unionist response" there even when workers were going on strike. That was wrong?
In the "Baby P" case, socialists, like all decent people, trade unionists of course foremost among them, cannot but take account of of and concern themselves with a dimension in the situation which is broader than "narrow" trade unionism and which may be or seem to be counterposed to it. We are concerned with the work, with the outcome, with the "product", with the worker "giving satisfaction" in the performance of the job. We are concerned for the children.
Anticipatory "socialist" elements within capitalism
How can we not be? Marx famously long ago described the "Ten Hours Act" as a little bit of the "political economy of the working class" within the High Victorian capitalist system. You could argue that the work the social workers do is an element of the future socialist society which the labour movement has — as with the welfare state in general — imposed on the capitalist system.
The contradiction is that it exists in capitalist society, and so do the social workers, who therefore must be self-defending trade unionists, too. Even so, here and now, in this society, we are concerned that the work they do should be done, and done properly.
The measure of how badly it was done in the "Baby P" case is that the little boy is dead. We can't be less concerned with this outcome of the work than with the interests of the social workers, without betraying our general socialist outlook and concerns, without mutilating ourselves politically, without letting our general socialist outlook sink into "narrow trade unionist" attitudes.
Anybody who would draw from what I say here the conclusion that (or the conclusion that I say that) workers in the social services should dispense with trade unionism - anyone who thinks that we should do other than defend the right of those workers to strike - would be a fool, or simply malicious.
But to place the quality of the "work" done on the children, of whom "Baby P" is the most recent known casualty, below trade unionist defence of workers some of whom may bear (so it seems, but we don't know yet) a very great deal of responsibility for letting him be murdered, is to adopt a repulsively blinkered caricature "trade unionism".
"No blame"
The notion of a blanket "no-blame culture" in this field - irrespective of what happens to the children? - reads to me like a bad and very hostile satire on "socialism", conceived of as a more benign variant Russian Stalinist bureaucratism - life regulated by benign public officials who enjoy immunity whatever happens.
Tom asks if I have no hint of empathy with the social workers. Yes, of course I have empathy, as for all workers harried, driven, under-resourced, scapegoated, etc.
For another example, it is impossible not to sympathise with teachers in the horrible situation of trying to "teach" in conditions where the whole system into which they are locked fails so many children, some utterly. Yet we do not adopt a "narrow trade-unionist" approach to the classroom. We are for the NUT, not the NASUWT, the more "narrow trade-unionist" of the teacher trade unions.
But how much weight can general sympathy with the social workers — understaffed, etc., as they are - have against the feelings that well up for the child "P" and for the vast numbers of other ill-treated children? I have found it impossible even to look steadily and directly at the picture of that child which have been everywhere you look for the last couple of weeks.
No doubt having a three year-old grandson, a little boy full of the joy of life, of learning about himself and the world that is opening out for him, and a seven year old granddaughter who has gone through that phase and is now at the "age of reason", has something to do with it... but these days I find the seemingly endless stream of horror stories about ill-treated children increasingly hard to take in or think about... Emotionalism? Indeed. I submit that there is a great deal to be emotional about.
It is not a matter of not being trade unionists, but of putting trade unionism in a broader, that is, a social, and for us socialist, framework.
Workers' control
One answer to such gruesomely disorganised and mismanaged social services as those that failed "Baby P" would be for the rank and file trade unionists - the case-workers, etc., who are surely also concerned about the "service" they run being so often wretched - to break out of "narrow" trade unionism and seek to take control of organising the work, integrating power and responsibility - workers' control. Of course, such a solution presupposes a high level of militancy.
Maybe we should raise such possibilities within the unions, if only, for now, as part of our educational work. Similarly, we might call for a trade-union, workers' inquiry into the "Baby P" case.
Even then, I can't see how any system dealing with the welfare of children could operate an entirely blame-free culture. Even in a fully socialist society, some things would go wrong. There would have to be some apportionment of responsibility, calling to account, learning of lessons. How could a child-centred system dispense with that?
There are of course other, less drastic, situations that cry out for the workers to take control and, maybe, for the unions to step out of their normal limitations and routines. For example the overcrowding and overcharging of passengers on mainline railways is now so extreme that it might be possible for the railworkers to engage in common action about it with the passengers, and maybe initiate or develop the organisation of the passengers.
The last time I travelled on a crowded mainline train - in a crowd not quite as thick as on a Tube train at rush hour, standing in the aisles from London to Manchester, while first-class carriages were half-empty - I found myself fantasising that the RMT might "organise" the oppressed passengers and combine with them against the rail operators.
It is not just a way-out fantasy. There is talk of passenger action against rail fare increases. In other areas, too, the consequences of the economic crisis will demand of us more than narrow trade unionism.
To sum up
To sum up: in the "Baby P" case, it is not a question of shedding trade unionism, or brushing it aside, but of needing to put it in the social context. Socialists have broader concerns. The incapacity of Haringey social services management (and of course, not only Haringey) to run an effective child-protection service has to be our concern. The bottom line is a little boy who was under supervision for a long time by the social services being repeatedly beaten, eventually beaten to death.
We live in a world which - even leaving aside the vast numbers of children who die from malnutrition and lack of elementary medical care - is a horrendous swamp of ill-treatment of children on many different levels - emotional, physical, intellectual, sexual, and god knows what other sorts of abuse.
It is only in the last two decades or so that it has come out that many supposed refuges for orphans and other children have been, in reality, Devil's Islands in a vast archipelago of centres of concentrated sexual and other abuse. (Some of the abusers were, of course, trade unionists, and properly entitled to trade union defence until proven guilty. Note for people who like to sound off: no, I am not equating the Haringey social workers with the abusers on the staff of children's homes).
I think future generations will look back on our astonishing acquiescence and complacency about that as we look back on those who tolerated sending small children up chimneys as human soot-brushes or putting children of eight into factories or down coalmines, and as enlightened people now look back on the routine physical abuse of ordinary schoolchildren that went on until recently. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, see my articles on what it meant in Ireland.)
I don't think socialists should be complacent about that ill-treatment of children - or bury our heads in the routines of narrow trade unionist concerns, taking the attitude that the only thing, or the main thing, that matters is the job security, conditions, etc. of workers who work with children. I repeat what I wrote in the article: that is the opposite of a socialist approach.
