Defend the Kray twins?
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-08-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
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THE 1950s and early '60s were an era in which a mass women's and gay movement were only an idea in the minds of a handful of isolated individuals. It was into an East End working class culture strongly permeated (as it indeed still is today) by a strict sexual division of labour within the family and a dominant macho ethos, that the Kray twins were born.
The fact that both Ron and Reg were gay and could find no public cultural expression or outlet for their sexuality was an important factor in understanding their career of crime. What's more, even in 1969 when they were brought to trial this was barely comprehended.
Taunt
John Pearson, in his biography of the twins, "The Profession of Violence" documents how Ron in particular had undergone personal degradation over a long period of time from a number of heavy straights. Jack "the hat" McVitie was a case in point.
In order to prove their allegiance to the masculine stereotype, and simultancously repress their genuine sexual proclivities, they answered bourgeois society and its taunting hypocrisy with the only language they knew - violence.
As socialists defend the acts of violence perpetrated by the Krays as a method of solving nonpolitical disputes. However, we also have a duty to strip away the repressive facade into which capitalism • inserts the real relationships of exploitation.
The Krays were part of an oppressed minority - in that sense it is an obligation on all revolutionaries to unconditionally defend them.
RAY ATTWELL, Rochdale.