Tomorrow is National Day of Protest Against Welfare & Housing Benefit Cuts

Tomorrow is National Day of Protest Against Welfare & Housing Benefit Cuts. See the FaceBook page here to see events near you.

In London there’s a Housing Emergency protest at Downing Street December 15th 12.30. If anyone wants to join in with London event bring cardboard boxes, marked housing emergency or homeless etc and sleeping bags as props. Followed by some street theatre around homelessness in Trafalgar Square at 3ish.

See this website for more information about events.

“Is it cos I’m a radical”? Policing and political unrest

“Far from representing the collective interests of the ‘collective interests of the community’, the police act in the interests of a particular class. It is true that the police may act in the interests of individual members of the working class as a whole, but they have historically opposed, and do contemporarily oppose, the interests of the working class as a whole”.

“The various institutions and personnel of the state that are subject to this study – the law, the police, the army and the intelligence agencies play their part in the reproduction of the prevailing order which entails the incorporation, containment or elimination of any political movement threatening capitalist dominance”.

Both of the above quotes are from Tony Bunyan’s excellent “The Political Police in Britain”.  He’s writing in 1977 but extracts can be equally applied to this specific epoch. During the past months we have seen an unelected coalition with no mandate to enforce a level of unprecedented austerity cuts on the public. This slash-fest attacks the very core of public services and the welfare state.

People have been organising against the cuts but the flashpoint came with the LibDems pissing their promises in the wind over tuition fees the result being students have been revolting; occupying, organising and demonstrations. During the past month or so students have protested and have experienced the full force of the agents of the state aided and abetted by the media.

The emphasis being on the “violence” of the protesters, smashing windows at Millbank, destroying a police van, graffiti on the warmongering imperialist racist statues, smashing more windows, fire extinguishers chucked and so on. Yet when cops attacked it was referred by media hacks as “skirmishes” and/or “scuffles” not full-on unrelenting violence. The reality is indeed ignored, minimised, or devalued. The spot-light is on the protester not on the supposedly accountable public servant, the police.

And the treatment of the protester not just on the demos but by the media is revealing. Jody McIntyre interviewed by Ben Brown on the BBC is a case in point. Language like “he appears to be pulled from his wheelchair” was said before the interview intended to cast doubt on Jody’s testimony. You kinda guess that he will face a very hostile interview and he does. Brown exposes himself as a shoddy and dense journalist a surefire mouthpiece of the ConDems of the sorts Michael Gove will be proud of by not listening to anything Jody says other than throwing accusations at him such as, “were you throwing anything at the police”, “you’re a revolutionary, aren’t you”…I mean, whatever Jody’s politics are they don’t give the cops the right to attack him! I must confess the way he dealt with Brown was impressive and admirable, he kept his cool. Along with his correct comments about the cops “inciting and provoking violence”. Precisely, and kettling is one way denying freedom of moment, civil liberties, access to basic amenities, containment in an area along with violent attacks by the police. And of course, a young man, Alfie Meadows, is in hospital precisely as a result of this hideous violence.  If you want to create a climate of fear, frustration and anger then kettling brings all that to boiling point.

But all this isn’t new, as Tony Bunyan maintains, and the police are a part of a state which is not neutral. They do indeed defend the interests of the ruling class. The powerful versus the powerless.

Historically, with class struggle and those fighters have been stigmatised and criminalised and vilified (see a pattern? “Anarchists”, “Trots”, “Yobs” and so on). Emphasis is made of the “mob rule” but little is said about the rule of the police or of the state. Much is mentioned of crimes and misdemeanors against the cops yet not one cop has ever been held accountable for the countless deaths in custody, Blair Peach, Jean Charles de Menezes, Harry Stanley and Ian Tomlinson. The police are supposed to be accountable yet they are above the law and a law unto themselves. Sir Paul Stephenson mentioned that he would have resigned over the Camilla/Charles vandalised car if asked but surely he should resign over what happened to Alfie Meadows, that is of far greater concern than a car getting attacked with two parasitical royals inside?

Theresa May (toing and froing over water cannons) talks about “policing by consent” but as we see historically, when the class struggle hots up the state “rests on the duality of force and consent” and “today the state’s authority derives from the consent given to it by the majority of the people, and the groups who withhold consent by active opposition are disciplined by agencies of the state”.

Since the Miners’ Strike there has been continued attacks on the act of protest, curtailing the right to strike to further erosion of civil liberties under New Labour and now the ConDems along with their mutterings about water canons. When the ruling class feel under threat they use the police for their own means along with offering paramilitary solution after paramilitary solution, which is an attack on liberal democracy.