Some basic thoughts on #copsoffcampus and where next

STUDENT AND WORKER SOLIDARITY

The past 2 months have been characterised, in part, by something we should all be happy to see: student and worker solidarity. Many students across the country joined picket lines during the Halloween HE strike. The same was true for the December 3rd strikes, though, numbers on picket lines seemed smaller. Despite this the solidarity went further in one important sense around the December strike: students across the country escalated their action and occupied various key locations in their universities. That week was incredibly exciting; at 13:00pm you would hear  Birmingham was in occupation and just a half hour later followed Goldsmiths. The messages of all the occupations was largely unified and clear: they were opposing the privatisation of staff jobs at universities, the squeezing of lecturers for more work and smaller wages and the material and ideological transformation of our universities into for-profit businesses. Underpinning all of this, though, was student solidarity with workers which, particularly during a time of scepticism and perhaps lack of confidence, is crucial.

In a similar vain, on the 4th of December an occupation at Senate house was organised and executed. The target: Senate House management block. This was something that had never been done before and whilst bold also brought with it a lot of political capital: it aimed to centralize hitherto isolated and local struggles by targeting the big-boss of universities in London: University of London management.

The politics and aims of this occupation are well documented elsewhere so I'll skip straight to the repression. In response to the occupation management went first for violence and forceful eviction rather than seeking a High Court Injunction or engaging students in discussion. They sanctioned security, assisted by the police, to forcibly evict students from the occupation. In hindsight, they probably thought they could quickly isolate and crush the 70 odd students who occupied Senate House. In reality they couldn't have been more wrong. Their violence precipitated vast swathes of outrage.

Following the forced eviction and police brutality, more and more students became infuriated by what had happened. In response to our democratic rights to protest, management had resorted to violence. After 2 demonstrations on the 5th and 6th (each progressively bigger than the last) the anger at repression culminated in a 1500+ strong demonstration on the 11th. Crucially, cops were kept off campus on the 11th, but why?

In part, it will have been because they clearly made a mistake and went in too hard the week before. Nevertheless, they did the same in 2010 and the argument was not as successfully won back then. A crucial factor was that of numbers: there were enough people - given the circumstances - to prevent direct provocation, which would not have ended well. But I don't think it's correct to talk about numbers in abstraction from the almost instantaneous solidarity students received from lecturers, staff and trade unionists. Messages condemning the violence poured into the media from lecturer after lecturer and trade unionist after trade unionist. This played a crucial part in winning the argument against management both in the media and so, by proxy, on our campuses. Particularly given the way the media hammered students after 2010, this was significant.

This level of solidarity is going to be critical to taking the student movement forward in the new year. As fun as fighting the police may be, it's unsustainable. Concerted efforts need to be made to continue to connect student to industrial work to maintain active peripheries and bases; with the aim of broadening things out.

WHAT OF THE 11TH?

From what I've seen of the occupations that happened, particularly the smaller ones, they were generally led and built by established members of the left who were either at Millbank or radicalised during the slipstream of Millbank. The demonstration on the 11th, from my experience, was markedly different. There were plenty of new faces, plenty of those on one of their first demonstrations.

At King's, for example, over 40 people came. These people in large part were either members of the feminist society, LGBT society or BDS campaign/Action Palestine society. This is no accident. There seems to be a strong political impetus for connecting struggles right now. For example, the argument was made in the feminist society that the same police who "no crime" rape reports are the ones who are suppressing our protest. The #copsoffcampus's most popular chant is probably "Who killed Mark Duggan, Police killed Mark Duggan" and the demonstration on the 11th energetically took itself down to the Mark Duggan inquest.

Connecting struggles in this way is going to be key to building on numbers and growing. The impetus we have generated now should not be pigeon holed into a single, all-en-composing, top-down campaign with a single objective. As Alice B explained to me, 2010 was mostly about fees, but now there seems to be a generalized anger at the general way austerity is fucking up student's lives. While a campaign with definite goals will be crucial for establishing victories and building confidence and numbers, the political aims and solidarity of a campaign need not be pigeon holed.

This means that crucial arguments are going to be about, for example, the connectedness between sexism and the police, or, privatisation of jobs on campuses, exploitation of migrant labour and racism. It's not true to say there has been no student struggle but the reality is activist groups are either isolated or single-issue campaigns. Moving forward is going to involve bringing these people together and the start of the process can be connecting the political dots: for example, waging arguments that link the rise of lad culture with the neo-liberal period that leads to out-sourcing of labour on campus.

WHY WERE COPS ON CAMPUS

I think now more than ever arguments about how the apparatus of the state are mobilised to protect profit and capital are salient. Management called the police at the Senate House occupation because students were hitting them where it hurts; their pockets. But importantly, instead of the police protecting student's right to peacefully express dissent and protest, they battered us. Police serve capitalism, not communities.

But this also draws out the model that universities are now shaping themselves upon, and is particularly symbolised by the actions of UoL management. Instead of universities being a place of the free flowing of ideas, the exercise of freedoms and the democratic engagement of students in how university runs, put simply, students are now customers of yet another big business. This is why management chose violence instead of dialogue: engaging in dialogue may have forced them to discuss why they are cutting staff wages, why they are privatising and outsourcing and why their pay packets are growing while our staff's shrink. In essence, it would have challenged their pursuit of profit.

This in a very striking way places their profit motive in conflict with student democracy. Students no longer play a role in shaping how universities work and when we attempt to force a dialogue we are crushed. But it is precisely because universities are run for the benefit of profit, not students, that our voices no longer matter. I think it is the underlying question of democracy on campus that united so many groups of people around the 11th demonstration and brought in so many new people.

2014

In think three things we need to consider going forward are: first, how we solidify the connectedness of struggles to bring in the broadest possible layers of people: this is going to involve making important political arguments with those not immediately connected to the #copsoffcampus demonstrations. Secondly, we need to continue to show solidarity with workers and discuss how we can use this to build upon the events of the past 2 months: student/worker solidarity got us here and can therefore take us forward. Lastly, how do we exploit the issue of democracy on campus which has the ability to unify broad groups of activists and concerned students around a common issue that affects us all?

Short response to Callinicos: Oppression and Democratic Centralism

Callinicos' recent Review piece in response to Ian Birchall is very interesting; the tone of it is markedly different to January.

I think, though, we need to defend against attacks on the previous opposition regarding being undisciplined, dangerous and impatient; something Callinicos implicitly does when he writes about the dismissal of Chris Harman as editor of SW and the oppositional minority's caution in moving.

It may well be true when the dispute is about who is the editor of a newspaper that the minority ought to back down following a vote. But absolutely not when it comes to rape and women's oppression. Rather than being undisciplined, members of the previous opposition stood by their politics on women's liberation and stood with women who had the courage to challenge their oppression. It's a testament to those who stood with the women - and the women themselves - that in the face of bullying, manoeuvring, scapegoating, ad hominem, lying, colluding and slandering they stood up and fought.

If the version of democratic centralism that the CC wants to "campaign" for allows for the legitimisation of a situation where votes mean we're expected to post-pone or abandon our politics on rape and women's oppression then that's not an organisation fit for the purpose of being the tribune of the oppressed. It means the SWP is not suitable for being the vanguard of the working class that levels socialist arguments in order to challenge oppression with the ultimate aim being to unite the working class - women with men - against capitalism.

You can put me in a room with a million other people; I won't back down on my politics on oppression even if 999, 999 vote to abandon theirs and democratic centralism should not require me to.

"You did hear me." - Miscommunication and Rape. A short reply to Rosie Warren

Rosie’s piece on the International Socialism Network website entitled 'On Believing Women Who Allege Rape' can be found here.

It’s worth saying that I absolutely commend what Rosie is trying to do with her discussion on miscommunication. First, she’s attempting to shift the blame for supposed miscommunication from the woman, to the man. She writes:

“While it may indeed be the case that there has been a misunderstanding, it is surely the man who has not understood that this is rape, rather than the woman who has not understood that it is not." 

As Rosie correctly argues consent is something that is given actively, enthusiastically and consciously and therefore cannot be something a woman gives unintentionally. Secondly she’s analysing how mythologies about rape can have an effect on how some men relate to consent. The effect being that some men have a much skewed notion of what consent actually is. This often culminates in men having sex with women without the woman’s consent: up to 95,000 rapes are estimated to happen each year and The Haven’s reported in 2010 that 23% of women living in London have been made to have sex without them wanting to.

A caveat is important: the source of oppressive understandings of consent is not that there are a few men who just so happen to be bad apples. Nor is it the case that the way of the world dictates that some men are destined to harbour oppressive ideas. It’s important to stress the structural sexism that moulds sexual relations between men and women and argue that these structures lay the basis for defining abusive relations between men and women. Ultimately, this is where the blame lies; it is not the case that men are naturally abusive and not merely a matter of men being alienated.

However, there are, I believe, negative implications to the way in which Rosie discusses miscommunication and several objective and political reasons why I think her emphasis on it in the latter parts of her piece is far too much. I would argue that the question of miscommunication is not one we should even be acknowledging.

Firstly, if a man is unsure about whether consent has been given, but proceeds with sex anyway, it means he is perfectly comfortable with maybe being a rapist. If he thinks but does not know he got consent, or, isn’t sure but reckons it was likely, or, is hesitant in any way he has accepted the possibility that there was not actually consent. This may be the case even if he leaves the experience without believing himself to be a rapist (or not actually being a rapist). I mention this only because when some men claim there was miscommunication, but they proceeded with sex anyway, it is quite telling that they were willing to continue while not being sure they had consent.

David Lisak and Paul Miller discovered something incredibly important and telling about rapists on a particular campus in 2002: the majority of rapists are repeat offenders. Specifically, 63% were repeat offenders. They found that of the men studied 6.4% met the criteria for being a rapist. Crucially, the rapists interviewed were responsible for 28% of all violent and sexual crimes against women and children recorded in the study. This means a very small group of men are responsible for a disproportionately large bulk of sexist crimes against women. Other studies have found similar results. My conclusion when faced with findings like these is that if you’re repeating an offence then you know exactly what you’re doing: you’re a conscious predator. Rosie rightly pointed out when discussing this informally that it might not be the case that they are conscious predators. Rather, it may just be the effect of sexist ideas - mixed in a deadly broth of alienation – that perpetually causes some men to abuse women.

There are several things that complicate this line of argument, however. To begin with, most rapists are not only repeat offenders but also have a thought out methodology for carrying out their rapes. Rapists try very specifically to achieve two things. They need to weaken resistance; this is often done with the deliberate use of alcohol and drugs. But also they need to place themselves in situations of privacy so there can be no witnesses to what has happened. It’s by doing this that rapists put themselves in situations where it’s one word verses another; something they are conscious puts them in a favourable position when it comes to accusations being brought before the law. Not only does weakening resistance and maximising privacy mean evidence will often be scant, but the one word verses another dynamic allows the rapist to mask their disregard for consent behind myths such as “I thought she consented as we had sex before” or “I thought she consented because she was flirting all night.”

Since most rapists behave like this it calls into serious question Rosie’s emphasis on miscommunication. Most rapists behave exactly like predators: they plan their attacks and have a methodology they use to carry it out. This is why if you look at the rapes of repeat offenders there is, more often than not, strong similarities between how the rapes have occurred. This doesn't suggest to me a paradigm of miscommunication; it suggests a dichotomy of predator chasing prey.

Importantly, a 1999 study by Kitzinger and Frith found that, actually, men have no problem understanding soft refusals (those that don’t actually include the word ‘no’) as genuine refusals in contexts outside of sex: for example, “I’m tired.” Are we to assume that an erection means a man loses his ability to understand the kind of refusal that, usually, he comprehends with no difficulty? This would be a bleak view of men in general and an apologetic view of rapists. Kitzinger and Frith came to the conclusion that the problem with rapists is not that they misunderstand consent. They hear the no perfectly clearly: the problem is they actively ignore it. I agree. But in conjunction with the discussion thus far (the repeat offending and the use of a methodology) this applies to most, if not all, rapists. This means to me we ought to be characterising rapists in general as predators.

Lastly, what are the implications of an emphasis on miscommunication? In British law the definition of rape contains mens rea: i.e. “guilty mind”. This means that in order for someone to actually be a rapist within the law the the man must either believe the woman is not consenting, or, his belief that she was consenting was unreasonable. For me, given mens rea, an emphasis on miscommunication becomes concretely problematic as it robs some women of a meaningful legal foundation to bring cases forward to the police. If miscommunication is something we argue is real and genuinely does mean there are a chunk of cases where miscommunication leads to rape then it seems to me this supposed miscommunication can be used as a way of claiming the man did not have a “guilty mind” and, in fact, his belief that there was consent was wholly reasonable.

In essence miscommunication becomes the defendant’s defense. But I argue that miscommunication is not something that actually applies to the vast majority (if not the totality) of rapists. So, arguing that miscommunication is something we need to make political considerations of obscures the very real fact that most rapists are conscious predators. That kind of argument also invites miscommunication to be used as a defense and a way of avoiding being proven to have had a "guilty mind". If the British definition of rape did not contain mens rea then all that would matter was that the sex was non-consensual. Indeed, I agree with Rosie’s definition of rape as solely non-consensual sex without mens rea. But when analysing rape we also have to be mindful of how our analysis translates to the law and due process. Arguing that miscommunication has any substantial significance when analysing rape opens a space for rapists to claim their belief there was consent was reasonable because there was objective miscommunication. Therefore, I argue notions of miscommunication should be rejected not solely because what we know about the profile of rapists suggests the majority of them are conscious predators but also because perpetuating this notion creates a layer of rapists who, reasonably, just did not understand and this cuts off the victims of such rapists from having a meaningful position to take their case before the law.

I’ll stress though, Rosie’s article is very welcome and very good and every person who cares about fighting rape and women's oppression should have no problem searing the following into their brains and arguments:

“The statement that we believe someone alleging rape is not only an important act of solidarity, but is also, given what we know about the nature of allegations, the only logically coherent position to take.”