Law and Order

Robert Clancy

[Reprinted from Land & Liberty, March, 1969]

J. EDGAR HOOVER (whose reappointment as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was as predictable as the celebration of the mass next Sunday), was interviewed on television and asked what he thought was the most important issue confronting America. He replied unhesitatingly: "Law and order." The interviewer then asked if Mr. Hoover did not think this issue hinged on the deeper question of social injustice. No, Mr. Hoover was sure that every other problem came under the heading of law and order. The interviewer gave up.

It is understandable that in an era of lawlessness and disorder this should be regarded as the paramount issue -- and not only in the U.S. Indeed it would be hard to find a country not beset by civil unrest. There are Catholic-Protestant disturbances in Northern Ireland; confrontation with the police in England, where people formerly had more respect for the police; internecine civil war in Nigeria; and uprisings even in Communist countries with all their "law and order."

A lot of ordinary "decent" citizens would agree with J. Edgar Hoover. They just want to live their lives and go about their business, and those nasty people who make trouble should be put down hard. People do not like to be interrupted in their round of daily life, and do not want the obligation of stopping to figure out why we have so many riots, strikes, demonstrations and insurrections. It just shouldn't happen, that's all, and should be stopped.

There was a widespread undercurrent of sympathy with George Wallace of Alabama, when he was a candidate for President, by people exasperated with riots. One of his gambits was that he would establish law and order when he got to Washington, even if he had to station armed guards every few paces in the streets. This always aroused frenetic applause. His supporters, thinking only of the troubles in the cities, evidently did not stop to think of the terrible consequences of jumping from the frying pan of disorders into the fire of the police state. To say nothing of the repressions, these tax-weary people did not stop, either, to consider the finances of the thing!

We got a frightening glimpse of the possibilities of a police state in Chicago during the Democratic convention last August, when the Mayor and the police were determined that "disorder" should not get the upper hand. The result was legalised disorder on a massive scale. Guilty and innocent alike were brutally mauled by upholders of "law and order."

The concept of "law and order" itself has been so mauled, in the theory and practice, that the danger is that it will become discredited. Already a Quaker publication, War-Peace Report, with the sub-title "Fact and Opinion on Progress towards a World of Law and Order," has recently changed the last three words to "Peace and Justice," explaining: "the phrase 'law and order' ... has recently come to be associated with the idea that social problems can be solved through the use of more police rather than by dealing with the roots of the problems." The editors of this publication are unfortunately right about the vulgarization of "law and order," and are to be commended for wanting to go to the roots of the problems.

George T. Tideman of Chicago writes: "Law and order, law and order -- over and over again we are hearing this couplet … Deep in human nature is the feeling that, over and through all, we are governed by a supreme law of justice which each one discovers in the inner voice called conscience. Indeed, by our endowed moral sense we are aware of the law of equity, which, if violated, brings on certain retributions in our social environment. We reap involuntary poverty and a train of evils that grow out of inequity. Inequity becomes iniquity."

This gives us a clue as to the way of tackling the problem other than carting off protestors in paddy wagons. If we start from there, we might wind up with something better than police dubs cracking skulls. We would then see that we have to start from first principles and that applications all along the line have to be in accordance with these principles.

By all means let us deal with disturbers of the peace. But when there is no more peace, when unrest becomes universal, let us search more deeply -- let us look for "the roots of the problems," as War-Peace Report counsels.

The "outside agitators" who are often blamed would not gain such success unless they found fertile ground in a widespread sense of injustice and frustration. Nor should we limit our attention to the issues that are usually brought forward, such as civil rights, the colour question, military conscription. There is a whole world of economic freedom to learn about and apply.

The attitude of many good people to disorders -- don't bother me, and give them hell -- becomes something more sinister in countries where a very few are very rich and the mass of the people suffer extreme poverty. In such countries the privileged minority protects its interests with a repressive police force on a sharp lookout for signs of discontent. Let us beware of such perversions of justice.

While we are properly indignant at unruly demonstrators, let us be careful that we do not unwittingly become dupes of monopoly and privilege. Let us rather be concerned to remove monopolies and privileges (and who will be the protestors then?), and we will therefore be in a stronger and more principled position to defend society from disruption.