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Title: Notes [Apr, 1889] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: April, 1889 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 3, No. 29, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3057, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
When the civilian Monro succeeded the soldier Warren at Scotland Yard,
there was talk in the Liberal press of harmony between police and
public. No more Endacotting, no more batoning of defenseless men and
women, no more political assaults. The guardian lions of existing
society were to roar as softly as any sucking dove, reserving their
teeth and claws for "real criminals." The last few days have furnished
some striking instances of the methods of our admirable police for the
preservation of peace and good will among men.
First, English detectives spy upon the privacy of certain Armenian
journalists in London, pay them, in fact, a domiciliary visit a la
Russe, and Lord Salisbury confesses in Parliament that this is at the
bidding of the Turkish ambassador, because the despots of Turkey object
to the opinions of the journal in question. Do the English workers wish
that the fruits of their labor, forcibly taken from them in the form of
taxes, should be devoted to paying spies to do the dirty work of the
Sultan? Yet this is the sole thing that necessarily comes of delegating
the business of self-protection to a government. "Birds of a feather
flock together," and rulers everywhere sympathize with one another.
Next comes a raid upon the unhappy prostitutes of the West End. The
police may find women in the streets whom they choose to imagine guilty
of the crime of solicitation. It is known to every honest person who has
reflected thereupon that so long as increasing crowds of women can only
get wages on which it is impossible to live and increasing crowds of
over-fed idlers loaf about seeking the gratification of lust, so long
must the buying and selling of human beings continue and police
interference only magnify the evil. Again and again it has been admitted
that when the slight check of partial publicity is removed and vise
driven into concealment, the only result is the increased suffering and
degradation of its victims, the increased cruelty of those who prey on
their misery. Yet here are the police again "suppressing vise" in the
interests of the hypocritical respectability which dare not grapple with
its causes.
The absolute power of Endacott & Co. in the streets is a standing menace
to half the population. Every woman who has occasion to pass through our
thoroughfares at night has as much to fear from the policeman on the
prowl for blackmail as from the license of the loungers. A friend of the
present writer was stopped at her own door by an officer who alternated
his outrageous accusations with nudges and whispered invitations to
square matters, whilst he was all obsequious servility to the lit in who
had escorted her home. She happened to be well known and influential,
and the constable's indiscretion was followed by elaborate apologies
from head-quarters; but for one woman thus in a position to defend
herself, there are thousands of working girls, who in such a case have
no alternative but to buy off the tyrant of the street if they would
avoid the shame of being haled to the police station amid every sort of
insult and next morning brought before the beak and condemned upon the
unsupported testimony of the disappointed blackmailer.
Another example of metropolitan police activity. On the 22nd of March
the Jewish workers of the East End organized a demonstration against the
sweating system, and at a mass meeting on Mile End Waste passed a
resolution condemning it. After the proceedings were over, Mr. Munro,
scenting Socialism not to say Anarchy beneath this audacity of the
wage-slaves, sent some of his men to break, without any sort of pretext,
into the Berner's Street Working Men's Club. The representatives of law
and order broke windows, tore down picture, and posters and fell with
their fists and batons upon a few of our comrades who happened to be
there. One, the wife of the steward, they threw down and kicked, others
they beat until the blood streamed, three were dragged to the station,
again beaten, and then charged with assaulting the police.
"Enthusiasm was never yet maintained in the history of human movements
by trimming and compromise." writes Comrade Hyndman in Justice. A truth
if ever there was one. But how does it stand in relation to Socialists
who admit that Communist-Anarchism is the end of the Revolution, the
goal of Society, and yet spend their lives in attempting to bring about
collectivist democracy on the ground that it is more immediately
practical? Or Socialist, who whilst acknowledging the absolute
rottenness of the present system of government, strain every fiber to
hoist men into its ranks? What possible reason have they to suppose that
amid the universal torrent of parliamentary humbug Socialist candidates
will keep "class war" and "collective ownership" pledges any better than
their Radical predecessors have kept theirs? Can it man touch pitch and
riot be defiled? Can the best among us persistently take a false
position and remain true to himself? To suppose so is to suppose that a
living organism can remain entirely uninfluenced by its environment.