LAW AND ORDER.

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 17, 18 November 1913, Page 3

LAW AND ORDER.

(By Harry Melrose.)

“ The social crimes of one age become the religion of the next/' The truth of this utterance has been proved in cases innumerable.' Men who have been persecuted and condemned for violating existing laws, have a decade later been extolled as heroes.

Knowing this to be true, it is wonderful the way in which the proletarian mind, bulldozed as it is by capitalist institutions, political, clerical,

judicial,- etc., clings tenaciously to existing social institutions. The highest ideal of animals is to secure food and shelter for themselves; but surely that of man, the ruler of the universe, should soar higher. Knowing as we do that

when placed beneath the unerring and relentless rays of scientific investigation, these puny, manmade laws lose their vaunted “ holiness/ ’ it sets

one wondering whether the average wage-slave should be pitied for his seeming ignorance, or treated with contempt for his abject cowardice,

or is it criminal apathy, in submitting ou quietly to the thongs that bind him, for most assuredly is he bound by the manacles of law and authority. But why this snivelling servility to the greatest curse of mankind ? One writer says: “ To get rid of the superstition of law, it is but necessary to examine it in all its aspects, to trace its origin and development, to study its results in operation." ’ Let us see: The necessity for law arose with

the inauguration of slavery, and the institution

of private property. Previous to the inception of slavery it was the invariable custom of the victors to eat the prisoners of war. But after years of cannibalism, man discovered that it was

more profitable to set the prisoners of war to till the soil, and perform other useful labour for him, than it was to eat him, and thus slavery arose. As the most powerful warrior usually captured the most slaves, it was natural that he was given grants of land, oil which to work his slaves, for it was by common assent of the people that the slave, if he must live, must work for his owner. The right of inheritance coming about this time, we have thus wealth and power, concentrated into a few hands. But how to

guard these properties gained by murder and plunder, from either the less fortunate or perhaps jealous members of the tribe, or from the unfortunate slaves themselves. The institution of law arose. Laws were passed by the influential and powerful few, and received the blessing of the priests or fetishes of the day, in return for concessions from these powerful warriors.

It was not difficult to make the people believe in these laws, for the priests had long neld sway .•over their minds before the institution of slavery, and steeped as they were in ignorance, superstition, and. bigotry, they were quickly made to see and believe in this holy alliance of earthly and heavenly laws. Thus were laws made •“holy.”

The soldiers and slaves of the masters, being ever at his service, and the penalties for disobedience to these laws being* of such a speedy and frightful nature, such penalties receving* the full sanction of the church, very few dared dismbey. Thus the law enforced on a people whose minds were twisted by religious superstitution, and fears of eternal punishment hereafter, assiduously preached by the church, and whose bodies were owned and relentlessly controlled by their powerful masters, became from its inception the greatest curse that ever manacled humanity. After centuries of slavery and serfdom, during which latter the laws were administered with the same cruelty, the divine right of kings and priests lost their power, and this divinity now form a halo round law and parliament. But where is the difference in its administration ? Merely this : Where they were formerly few they are now many. Its aims are the same, to guard the interests of the privileged few against the- possible attacks of the vast propertlyless masses. We find that law had its origin in force and murder, it owes its perpetuation to force, yes, and murder, and to the mental and bodily enslavement and degradation of the people. Bight through the pages of that bloody drama that men call history, we find those pages soiled and redenned by the blood of.the crushed and broken masses, crushed and broken in the interests of law and order, that the privileged few may satisfy their rapacious lust for gold and glory. Instruments of the most horrible torture have been pressed into its service—the rack, the thumb crew, the guillotine, the hangman’s rope,

etc. —the most fiendish devices have been employed to find the tenderest nerve of the suffering victim, limb torn from limb, the living flesh torn from the bones of the unhappy wretch who was unfortunate enough to come within its grasp.

Crimes of the most horrible nature have been committed by the state, with the full blessing and co-operation of the church.

Whether it be the tortures of the Middle Ages or the Inquisition, the massacre of Glencoe, the shooting of the miners at Featliersione, Carnegie’s bull-pen outrages, or coming to more recent times, the murders of the miners at West Virginia, Colorado, and Johannesburg, the clubbing of the workers of Dublin, the state as a law dealing institution has a lot to answer for. What are the crimes of the individual alongside crimes like these ? How can a people be expected to respect a law which ostensibly created to suppress crime commits such crimes as these ?

Instead of the respect it asks for, it should receive the whole-hearted condemnation it deserves. The thumbscrew and rack are gone, but the soldier’s rifle and bayonet, the policeman’s club, and the hangman’s rope are doing the work of suppression and murder. While there is a class composed of a privileged fewq and a huge majority of humanity composed of toiling, half-starved millions, torture must always go hand in hand with law. When a body of workers dares to assert its manhood, when driven to desperation by inhuman conditions they decide to strike, the soldier and policeman are always immediately brought to shoot and flog them into submission. These need no proof, as they are taking place in our present day and generation. Witness the inhuman prison conditions of the present time. Witness the so-called reformative treatment, where youths, for a trivial breach of the law, are herded with criminals of the lowest type. Witness the savage sentence of twenty years’ hard labour which McLean is at present serving in Mount Eden Gaol for assaulting an officious policeman. Witness the bloodthirsty conscription act, which inculcates the idea of murder as a virtue into the minds of our boys, and the damnable rigidity with which this law is enforced. Witness the city of Auckland at present infested with the hired assassins of the master class, who, at the command of their employers, have taken possession of the people’s parks and wharves, and who at a word, are ready to make the streets flow with blood, in their unholy desire to bludgeon and shoot the workers into submission.

All laws are unjust, for if they were not why the necessity of a standing army of soldiers, policemen, and hired assassins to uphold them ? It is true that what the sword has gained the sword must hold. While there is a privileged class in possession of the earth and a vast army of wage-slaves to be kept in subjection, repressive laws are necessary, and until the workers realise this and throw off the thraldon of wage slavery, the damnable indignities of law and authority will he enforced. The first act by which law or parliament function in the interests of all humanity, that act will be its last, for there will no longer be a class to be kept in subjection, the worker will have come into his own, and will stand erect in his might, recognising that all laws are rendered inoperative by the disobedience of the masses, and instead of the snivelling cry of respect for law and the powers that be, a mighty war will sound the slogan—Liberty for All!

To Hell with Law and Authoritv.