_ Wanted — a modern-day Dickens

By WILLIAM POMEROY ;
If Charles Dickens were alive today it is likely that a
current issue in, Britain would inspire him to write
another socially critical novel of the type that made him
famous in Victorian times. He would find that some of
the laws that victimized the poor 150 years ago, and that
moved him to caustic exposure of debtors’ prisons, work.
houses, orphanages and other compassionless features
of his society, are still enforced and upheld at present.
A committee in the House of Commons, the all-party
‘Home Affairs Committee, has conducted an investiga-
tion of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, and has just produced its
report and recommendations. These have startled many
people who had thought that social reform and the wel-

fare state had eliminated the worst evils of early British

_ Capitalism.

The Tory majority in the committee recommended no
change in the 157-year-old law, which penalizes begging
and homelessness. It is stated in their report that ‘‘the
time is not yet ripe’’ to repeal the Vagrancy Act, that it is
“found useful’’ by the police, and that it is ‘‘an effective

_ deterrent.”

In the Vagrancy Act, a homeless person may be fined
and imprisoned as a ‘‘rogue or a vagabond,”’ the defini-
tion applied to ‘‘every person wandering abroad and
lodging in any barn our outhouse or in any deserted or
unoccupied building or in the open air or under a tent or
any cart or wagon and not giving a good account of
himself or herself.”’

Under the Act, a homeless person who is ‘‘sleeping
rough”’ is subject to arrest and a fine of $450 or three
months in prison. A beggar can be fined $450 or impris-
oned for one month.

In the: past decade, prosecutions per year for those
“sleeping rough” have fluctuated between 416 to 167;

Pp cnons for begging have remained steady, at about
000 per year.. :

th: sting on retention of these penalties, the majority

report of the Commons committee said that “‘the proper
approach must lie in the increased provision of suitable
accommodations under the Housing (Homeless Per-

sons) Act or through such social agencies and voluntary freq

Organizations as exist to help the homeless."’
Actually, the Thatcher Tory government's policies of

Fred Ellis, U.S. Worker, 1928.

‘cutting social services and public spending generally
have contributed to the decline in London alone of 2,000
beds for homeless people in hostel dormitories. Un-
employment, affecting 11% of the national labor force,
and the virtual halting of housing programs are forcing
increasing numbers into ‘‘wandering abroad.”’ It is esti-
mated that more than 30,000 people are homeless in
London, and that at night at least 1,000 are sleeping
wrapped in newspapers under bridges or in derelict

‘‘How can-you, if you have any concern or feeling or
social conscience, allow that to continue? said one Tory
MP;-Charles Irving, who_is_vice-chairman of the par-

or

‘limentary Committeé of the Campaign for.the Homeless — unjust,
and Rootless (CHAR). Irving said that 224 people were cumstances. We have had the: offensesforover | ‘
150 years and they are now completely out of tine with | =

sent to prison in 1979 because they didn’t have a home,
uently because they could not afford to pay a fine.

“It is almost incredible in this House of Commons we
have been yapping along for years about imprisoning

people for petty and trivial offenses, yet even last year
more than 16,000 people went to prison for defaulting on
fines.”

Irving called the Home Affairs Committee report
“‘nauseating, obscene and an affront in a civilized socie-
ty.’’ Equally sharp were the remarksofRobert Kilroy-Silk,
one of four Labour MPs onthe committee who produceda
minority report that called for the repealing of the Vag-
rancy Act’s provisions. He said that it was ‘“‘barbaric’’ to
respond to poverty and homelessness by penalizing and
imprisoning those suffering from such evils.

“Dickensian offenses of sleeping rough and begging
have no place in modern compassionate society,”’ said
Kilroy-Silk. ‘‘It is unjust and indefensible that the law
should be misused in order to conceal from the more
cabo the hardships suffered by those who are home-

s.

“Instead of criminal penalties we need a determined
strategy by central and local government to provide a
range of accommodation for single homeless people.”’

Under pressure from the committee’s minority and
from social agencies the Home Affairs Committee finally
agreed that, while insisting on keeping the Vagrancy Act
essentially in tact, the penalty of imprisonment should be
lifted from begging and sleeping rough (although the fines
remain) but that imprisonment should still be handed out
to those found sleeping rough in ‘‘enclosed premises”
derelict or not-

The minority ‘called for repeal of all features of the
Vagrancy Act, and said that any person found in ‘“‘en-
closed premises”’ could easily be treated under existing
laws governing illegal entry or theft. What is needed,
however, is the abolition of laws making the features of
poverty a crime.

Andrew” Erlam, assistant director of the Howard
League for Penal Reform , said: ‘‘ These laws should
never be on the statute books at all. They are clearly

modern thinking on how to deal with the problems of
homelessness and poverty.”’
Will a present-day Dickens please take up his pen?

The daily press for July 4reported that
Toronto MP Robert Rae played a
‘pivotal role’’ in beating back the NDP
‘left-wing and reaffirming the economic
Policies- of the party establishment.”
(Globe & Mail)

The newsstory on the NDP’s national
Convention in Vancouver went on to de-
Scribe Bob Rae as a serious contender for
the leadership of the Ontario NDP. It

: Alfred Dewhurst

Nationalization and NDP leadership

namely to make the NDP a left ap-
pendage of the Liberal Party.

. Marxism-Leninism Today rovers, ine J chotner oad tha

the NDP leadership can take. It can
_ Move leftward, thereby becoming at-
tuned to the developing left mood in the
ranks of the working people — which
mood we expect was reflected by the left

noted also that ‘‘following a forceful
Speech by Mr. Rae’’, the party’s ‘‘na-
tional convention overwhelmingly de-
feated a motion calling for the national-
ization of financial institutions.’’

. ‘ * x * i

Rae, who is presently acting as the
NDP federal finance critic, is reportéd as
declaring before the convention that:

“In order to control the economy in a
Sophisticated (our emphasis) way . .. it is
Not necessary to own every financial
institution in the whole of Canada.

“To saddle this convention with an
across-the-board, mad resolution to
nationalize financial institutions ... will
Not help the small businessman, the
_ homeowner or the farmer,’’ said the

democratic socialist Rae.
* * *

What is important about Bob Rae’s
Position on nationalization of financial
institutions is that he purports to speak
for the NDP national leadership, whose
Position on nationalization is but a faint
echo of the real thing. It is akin to the
Liberal Party’s position, which is for
Canadian ownership; i.e., “‘Canadiani-
Zation’’. Energy Minister Lalonde at a
Meeting in Winnipeg last May, made that

Quite clear in respect to energy when he

said: ‘‘We (the Liberal government) are
for Canadianizing not nationalizing.’

The debating trick used by Rae to
sway the convention delegates to vote
against nationalization is nothing but
shere demogogy. For, the NDP national
leadership doesn’t want to be hampered
by a convention policy of nationalizing
the country’s main economic levers. But
how can the NDP bring in a genuine
economic alternative to the crisis
policies of monopoly and its political par-
ties, short of nationalization?

ae * %

The question of nationalization of the

main economic levers is a strategical

concept. How that policy will be applied
is a matter of tactics. This formula is well
understood by Bob Rae and the NDP
national leadership. That is why we
charge NDP finance critic Rae with sink-
ing to demogogic trickery, in order to
conceal the fact that the NDP leadership
has chosen to tail Prime Minister Trudeau
and his Canadianization policy, which is
based on corporate and monopoly
ownership. This concept is a far cry from
nationalization “under democratic

‘control.
This is not to say that the Liberal’s |

Canadianization policy does not have a

positive side. What is positive about that
policy is that it comes down on the side of
strengthening Canadian independence
and sovereignty in the face of aggressive
economic expansionism from the side of
U.S. imperialism. However, nationaliza-
tion would achieve the same end, while
taking control out of the hands of Cana-
dian monopoly.
* * *

Canadianization as advanced by the
Liberals means that the federal govern-
ment enters the realm of the corporate
elite by the route of state ownership of an
oil corporation and a service station
chain. Consequently, the federal
government has strengthened its position
in the oil and petroleum products indus-
try as a direct participant. Which of
course could also lead to positive results.
But it is not nationalization of the indus-
try. It is just a matter of state ownership,
which means that it is just one of a
number of competing firms.

If Liberal Party ‘‘Canadianization’”’ is
what Rae and the NDP national leader-
ship want then they should be forthright
and say so. However, the NDP leader-
ship should take a long hard look at
where this path leads to. To continue
along this path can have only one end,

delegates at the NDP national conven-
tion who put up a fight for a policy calling
for nationalization of financial institu-
tions. Those delegates showed much
more political foresight than Bob Rae
and the national leadership.

For instance, the high interest rates
being imposed upon Canadians are a
scandal and disgrace. Who are the ulti-
mate victims of high interest rates? The
working people of course. What is the
immediate cause of these high rates?
Isn't it the U.S.-Canadian connection
through the financial institutions and
their governments? Taking into account
both the immediate and the long-term
situation, this can only be changed,
through a policy of nationalization of the
banks and the credit system.

x* * *

We say that the way out of the serious
economic situation Canada finds itself
in, is for the NDP together with the
Communist Party, the trade union
movement and the other i
forces ‘to strike out for nationalization
under democratic control of the key sec-
tors of the economy, and to couple this _
with an all-out struggle for a People’s
Program to solve the economic and so-
cial problems facing the working people.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 24, 1981—Page 5

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