Policing Inequality
One of the many veteran Civil Rights leaders, speaking at the funeral service for George Floyd in Houston Texas said, to ever growing applause, that back in the 1960s those fighting for Civil Rights and against police brutality and killings were overwhelmingly black but that now they were being joined in the struggle by Hispanic people, by Asian people and indeed white people as well.
This is not only incontrovertibly true but also very importantly expresses the continuity and linkages of current events with the movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Our rulers are well aware of what's now at stake. But we can safely say that those of them who tried the same old standard responses to the mass mobilisations - a "violent minority" undermining the aim of the protests with "thuggery" and "criminal acts" found that their witterings sank without trace even quicker than did the statue of "Salver" Colston into the Bristol docks.
Sir Keir Starmer said it shouldn't have been torn down - but that it shouldn't have remained in place for so long! How long Sir Keir? How long? It is an an iniquity that it had to wait for yet another black person to be murdered the police for the matter to be dealt with properly.
The comments of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick and the leaders of Police Federation warrant much more attention.
Dame Cressida condemned "violent criminality" by a "minority of protestors" as "disgraceful" and said that it was "never acceptable" to "attack police" or "damage property".
John Apter, National Chair of the Police Federation - the police trade union - expressed some sympathy for the demonstrations but said they had been hijacked by "some who are intent on violence" against the police.
The head of the Metropolitan Police Federation however called on his "bosses" to apologise for failing to protect officers injured in the protests. Mr Ken Marsh called for urgent action from Dame Cressida and demanded his members were properly equipped with public order gear, including helmets and shields. He went on to say that the police should be dealing with the disorder "far more robustly" adding "we need to have the correct equipment on to deal with what is in front of us".
So far, so normal you might say? We've been warned! But these people have form.
On the day in July 2005 when Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes was the victim of a shoot to kill operation by the Met police down the Tube at Stockwell, the then Commander Cressida Dick, was the Gold Commander. Jean Charles was completely innocent. The then plain ordinary Keir Starmer QC was working at the DPP at the time. They decided not to prosecute any officers and it was subsequently treated as a matter of Health and Safety. It should be noted that since 1969 not one police officer has been convicted for their role in the death of someone in their "care".
Twelve years earlier in April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was brutally stabbed to death in Plumstead southeast London by a gang of at least five white racist murderers. It is now universally acknowledged that the resulting police inquiry was a charade and a cover up resulting from systemic institutional racism in the Met police together with police corruption at the local level. High Court judge Sir William Macpherson's public inquiry report published in 1999, described institutional racism as a form of collective behaviour, a workplace culture supported by a structural status quo, and a consensus - often excused and ignored by the authorities. Amongst its many recommendations, the report suggested that the police force boost its black representation, and that all officers be trained in racism awareness and cultural diversity. It took until January 2012, nineteen years after Stephen's death, for two of his killers to be successfully found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The continuities of racist policing are rooted deep in the building of trading empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then in the directly ruled colonies from the late eighteenth century onwards until well after the Second World War. During the colonial period the British Colonial Police forces and very often the regular armed forces played complementary and sometimes interchangeable roles in order to repress national liberation movements and political protest.
For example in 1967 the Hong Kong police used wooden baton rounds to disperse demonstrations that had started as a labour dispute but quickly developed into mass demonstrations against British Colonial rule. It's use led directly to one death and many injuries, but it was regarded as a successful public order weapon by the authorities.
When the peaceful Civil Rights movement in the North of Ireland, taking its inspiration and name directly from its counterpart in the USA at the time, was battered off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the B Specials, the lid could no longer be held down on the gerrymandered sectarian six county statelet. The British Army used rubber and then plastic bullets from July 1970 killing at least 16 people and maiming many more up to 1986. Using live ammunition they also killed many unarmed civilians - notably in the Ballymurphy Massacre in Belfast during August 1971 in which 11 people died over a period of 48 hours; and the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Derry in January 1972 in which 14 people died.
Plastic bullets were deployed for the first time in Britain at Broadwater Farm in October 1985. Commenting afterwards Sir Kenneth Newman admitted to being surprised that the operational commander had considered that the riot could have been contained without their use. Sir Kenneth had been Chief Constable of the RUC from 1976 to 1980 and was appointed Commissioner of the Met Police in 1982 remaining in office until 1987.
Perhaps the development of police mass surveillance and intelligence gathering may be more recognisable to today's younger activists, but such practices are deeply based in the counter insurgency theories developed by Major General Frank Kitson, who wrote what was to become the definitive text book on the subject, entitled "Low Intensity Operations". It was based on active service against national liberation movements in Malaya, Cyprus and Kenya. Shortly after the publication of the book in 1971, he was posted to the North of Ireland, tasked with overhauling the military intelligence system.
Intel, down to the minutest detail about every adult in the "suspect" community was collected and computerised. The "suspect" community were the Nationalists. It was deliberately aimed at criminalising the whole of that community.
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 officially brought that particular period to an end. However, it would be remiss to forget the history and to fall for the idea that racism in Britain or its policing is, or ever was, "nicer" or "more restrained" or indeed "policing by consent".
After all it was Britain that powered the Atlantic trade to provide our American cousins with their enslaved labour in what were originally our colonies. It's clear that the British Empire was the greatest engine of colonialism in the world during the nineteenth century and that the principle idealogical system that helped continue it's rule at home and enforce it abroad, was that of the claimed racial superiority of white British people.
But if Britain has lost its Empire why does racism and inequality persist and why does policing continue to uphold this rotten state of affairs? Many of us believe that it is because racism and inequality are the inevitable product of the class system and help to sustain that system. There is no hierarchy of oppressions involved here. The threads of racism and class division are woven into the basic fabric of our society and are mutually self - perpetuating.
'Policing - Reform or Abolition' - to follow.
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