ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding the clear statistical association between certain property offences, especially larceny, and lower social class it cannot be said that to any of the offences so far discussed, or indeed to any other category of offences, the idea of social class conflict is essential. Although it will but rarely happen, an act of stealing or housebreaking can be committed by a person of high social standing as well. White collar crime (WCC) is different: here the very fact of the offender's membership of a certain social class is an inherent, builtin, element. No doubt, many offenders steal because stealing is to them a natural expression of the feeling of belonging to an underprivileged social class (see below, Chapter 22), but there are many others who have no such feelings or whom it does at least not drive to larceny. And it is similar with acts of violence which may or may not be motivated by class conflict. This applies even to political assassinations as political conflict may be due to causes other than class differences, especially to nationalistic or racial fanaticism. Cases such as that of the man, described as a ‘general labourer’, who not long ago stabbed a Conservative Member of Parliament, Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport, ‘because of his title—no one should have a title’ (The Times, 19 and 28.6.1962), are rather exceptional. The details published in the press were too scanty to allow us to judge whether this was the act of a mentally disordered individual or a political crime in the traditional sense of the term, but it has to be borne in mind that, generally speaking, political crimes are committed in order to further the objects of political movements, large or small, not the idiosyncrasies of isolated individuals. 2 In the present case, the attacker seems to have acted as a lone wolf, an ‘outsider’. Whether he would conform to Camus's conception of the rebel (Chapter 20 above) is impossible to decide on the basis of the facts so far known, but it seems unlikely.
