Guy Aitchison and I were among the protesters outside the Bank of England on Wednesday. You can read his excellent account of his experience, including a summary of other opinions and reports, at OurKingdom. Guy takes us through the entire day picking up the debate on the police’s technique of ‘kettling’ along the way and placing it in the context of a systemic advancement of police powers at the expense of liberty. He closes by suggesting a ’summer of freedom’ in answer to the police prediction of a ’summer of rage’ and I for one will join him.
Britain’s Policing Problem
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This is also worth reading:-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos?commentpage=4&commentposted=1
I’d agree with tha commentator on that Grauniad site (about the Austrian cameraman) that the current manifestation of the ’system’ needs replacing, though I fear huge expenditure on ‘improving’ it is more likely. As for the Austrians and their pictures, at least the cops only deleted their photos and not their lives. The overwhelming stupidity of the police, at present, makes their actions seem like a War on Intelligence – I’m embarrassed to be English, with this nonsense going on.
But…like many here, I’m old enough to remember the Thatcher v Scargill coal strike. In the mid-1980s we had squadrons of ‘police’ wearing no numbers – I encountered them more than once, in person. They stopped and searched random vehicles on the A1 and elsewhere, and used highly aggressive tactics against demonstrators in London (I saw it first-hand from the top of the building I then lived in, scary stuff).
Whoever the unmarked ‘police’ were, they (and the huge crowds of police officers wearing numbers, mobilised nationally against the miners) were part of a political war waged by Government, on part of the population. I’m not saying Scargill was right, but the idea that this kind of appalling police behaviour began with New Labour is just wrong, and badly so.
Look back to the nineteenth century, and you’ll see the introduction of the strategy of police (and armed forces) dispersing London demos with sometimes fatal force. It’s what they did then, and they are still doing the same thing now. It’s happened time and again since the 1880s, at the behest of (generally conservative) parliament. Back then, the police were told to protect the Queen and the Gentleman’s Clubs. They did it all over again in the 1930s, to break up the huge and peaceful working-class marches from the north and elsewhere, once the crowds reached the capital. The police have, very sadly, and for a long time, been willing pawns in a game of keeping people down, with force and harrassment.