‘Safeguarding’ children or bosses’ profits?
In my work safeguarding children and young adults, I attended a conference in Lincolnshire this week.
Out of all the people there – training providers, guest speakers, education senior leadership, the police, and workers in various roles – not one person thought that young people could be kept safe in our society as it is today.
Whether county lines, child sexual exploitation, human trafficking or modern slavery, the same message was hammered home: your job isn’t to stop these things, your job is to build relationships and be there when vulnerable people reach out to you. Those working relationships are hugely important, but nobody made the obvious point that those crimes do need to be stopped somehow.
The reason nobody bothered to talk about preventing these crimes against society’s most vulnerable is clear. Where poverty exists, there will be crime. Where profit exists, there must be exploitation. These things are inherent to capitalism.
In other words, capitalism has no way of keeping any of us safe, let alone those children most at risk of serious harm. From the bosses’ point of view, why bother talking about the impossible?
Audience participation was not included in the conference, but I’ll be sure to discuss with my coworkers how limited our ‘safeguarding’ roles really are. Perhaps more importantly, we will talk about how the class that profits from this society would much rather have children in danger under capitalism than children protected in another system.
That’s not a class or a system I want to live under a moment longer.
Frankie Toynton, Hull
Coppers face cuts
Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley has criticised Chancellor Rachel Reeves for failing to sufficiently increase police funding, claiming there is a £260 million shortfall in the budget.
He also stated that the UK’s 43 regional police forces are unfit for purpose—and have been for over two decades. While frontline services are set to be preserved, 1,700 community support staff face potential job cuts.
Austerity remains the prevailing policy in Britain and across much of the capitalist world, sparking growing social unrest. Shoplifting is reportedly on the rise, though it pales in comparison to the systemic looting carried out by the ruling class.
Unable to offer real solutions, the capitalist system instead relies on the state to repress dissent – targeting groups like Palestine Action. Yet, the logic of austerity demands cuts even to repressive apparatuses like the police.
In my area, few have much faith in the police force to keep them safe. Public confidence in the police is already at a low point, especially following scandals like the Child Q inquiry. Most people I speak to feel they could do a better job of keeping the streets clean and safe. As one local homeless man put it: “When criminals are in charge, no one’s safe.”
As events in Sri Lanka and Kenya have shown, when the masses rise up, police can be swept aside like matchsticks. The real obstacle we face isn’t the absence of more officers on the beat—it’s the absence of revolutionary communists on every street.
Ben Cownley, Manchester
MI5 shielded a neo-Nazi
MI5 is facing fresh scrutiny after it was revealed the agency miscarried justice once again to protect one of its own. This was none other than a self-admitted neo-Nazi and extreme misogynist.
Under the intelligence service’s “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” doctrine, the man weaponised his position against his girlfriend, even terrorising her with a machete.
@bbcnews The woman at the centre of a case in which MI5 has admitted giving false evidence to three courts says she wants the service to give her a public apology. #MI5 #Spy #Informant #Judge #Court #Agent #SecurityService #Britain #News #BBCNews ♬ original sound – BBC News
Instead of removing him, MI5 chose to remain silent, using legal subterfuge to mislead and falsify facts to the courts for all of four months. Only now, under pressure, has a High Court judge admitted they have “no confidence” in MI5’s story.
Worse still, the case began to unfold in secret long before public knowledge. Back in 2022, then-Attorney General Suella Braverman tried to block a BBC investigation into the agent by seeking an injunction, succeeding in granting him legal anonymity. They took every possible step to whitewash the image of Britain’s intelligence services, no matter the cost to justice or public safety.
These types of security apparatus were never built with serving or protecting the working class in mind, so this incident is not unusual. What the Bourgeois press frames as an isolated failure is in fact emblematic of a systemic crisis. MI5 exists not to defend ordinary people, but to protect the interests of the elite.
They were willing to overlook an agent with Nazi views regardless of the terror he caused. They didn’t care about his partner, those around him or the threat he posed. What mattered was that he helped enact the interests of the establishment. And when it became a scandal, they tried to brush it under the rug.
Now, the courts are demanding answers. But initiating contempt of court proceedings against the agent and stopping there will do nothing to address the root of the problem. This merely offers the ruling class a convenient scapegoat while leaving the machinery that enabled him entirely intact. Instead, the scandal must be understood for what it is.
A symptom of deep, systemic rot, for which no true justice will be found in court hearings or internal reviews.
This case is a wake-up call. We need to smash institutions like MI5 and only then can we establish a workers’ state from the ground up, built by the working class and for the true protection of the working class. We need to fight for a society where violent extremists are not shielded as a consequence of protecting the capitalist system.
The only answer is to organise, expose the lies and overturn the entire rotten system!
Lily, Preston
Who are the real criminals?
Last weekend our comrade received a £100 fine from Leicester city council. Their crime? Politically campaigning for communism, with the aid of a table.
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In April the Labour-led council brought in a new “Public Spaces Protection Order” across Leicester city centre as a tool to “to address behaviours that cause harm or nuisance in public spaces”.
A public survey received 1,139 responses (0.2 percent of the city’s population), where 96 percent agreed that antisocial behaviour in the city was having a detrimental effect.
30 percent of the complaints were regarding e-bikes, 17 percent about begging and 10 percent about noise amplification. There were no complaints of political stalls, with several responses even objecting to potential curtailing of demonstration or protest.
But the Starmerites in the council saw a golden opportunity to clamp down on any pesky opposition.
In introducing measures to block all campaigning with ‘unauthorised structures’ like a table or banner, the council have now effectively banned political stalls. They are currently taking the local Socialist Party to court over the same fine as our comrade, to which we extend our solidarity.
These measures have been carefully designed as an excuse to curtail freedoms of expression and association. This episode cannot be separated from the general attacks on basic democratic rights which are becoming more common as the ruling class clamps down on the vanguard of opposition, in fear of wider mass movements.
The same logic drives Leicester city council, who like others are making cuts to basic services and want to nip any political opposition in the bud.
Yet the crisis of capitalism today will continue to push more and more people to question their previous beliefs and look for radical alternatives. To all of those desperate for a solution, the RCP in Leicester is organising – and won’t be pushed off the streets by these attacks!
Phil Baker, Leicester
