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The role of the police Lois Anderson looks at a key debate within the YRE. Welling, October 16.
EXPERIENCE OF anti-racist demonstrators at the hands of the police has made a discussion on the police's role vital for members of Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE).
On last year's October 16 Welling demonstration protesters had their route blocked by riot police who then divided the crowd into sections and systematically charged them. All police leave had been cancelled and 7,000 officers were drafted in to defend the fascist BP's headquarters. Why? To teach young people that this demonstration, unofficial and militant, would not be tolerated. Justice Bill currently going The Criminal through parliament will give the police more powers to prevent demonstrations, pickets and assemblies. It also includes plans to outlaw raves, festivals and New Age travellers. This crackdown democratic rights. Over 40,000 marched on 24 July in opposition to the bill.
Many young people see democratic rights being conceded all over the world, for example in South Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile in Britain the opposite process appears to be taking place. The Tories and the ruling class recognise that their economic system is in crisis. A quarter of those unemployed are under 25. The colleges are packed to the brim and student poverty and debt is rife. Young peoples' radicalism and willingness to fight is exemplified by the numbers on anti-racist demonstrations. The current strikes by signal workers Police • 13
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and postal workers industrial battles.
At the same time the mood of young people is such that outbursts, riots like those of the 1980s, could break out even this summer. The ruling class are preparing for all eventualities. Most inner-city areas of Britain have the potential to flare up, as Los Angeles did two years ago, or erupt in a similiar fashion to France's 'urban intifada'.
the
The Tories are
meas
police
to and
taking strengthen the courts.
The Tories are taking these measures to strengthen the state, in particular the police and the courts, to prepare for future movements of the youth and the working class. It is because of this that workers and youth need a clear understanding of the nature of the state in capitalist society, to prepare our response to these attacks on democratic rights, to plan how we must organise in the light of new police powers, and to clarify our demands in relation to the police.
All of these questions were hotly debated at last year's YRE British conference. The resolution from Greenwich and Bexley YRE stated the majority maitinn in rolation to the nolice: "The police's iob
primarily is to protect the property and the powerful". No prospect can be held out that the police can be roformed into something different.
But it was also recognised that, whilst basing ourselves on the need to change society, and with it dismantle the present state, we also have to "come to grips with the immediate problems of the role of the police". While we can have no reliance on the police to stop racism and fascism, relying on our own strength to defend our communities from racist attack, it is also necessary to demand, however, that the police are made more accountable and subject to democratic control.
This was the most controversial part of the resolution. A minority put forward the idea that it was a contradiction to first explain that the police are part of the capitalist state, acting in the interests of the ruling class, and then to raise demands for democratic accountability. Surely, it was argued, the ruling class 'would never allow' the working class to 'control the police.
:14 • Police
of the rich
O ANSWER THIS question it is first nec-
essary to understand the Marxist analysis
of the state. Engels argued that the state
is "an organisation of the exploiting class at each period for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, therefore in particular for the forcible holding down of the exploited class in the conditions of oppression (slavery, bondage or serfdom, wage labour determined by the mode of production". "In the last analysis", he wrote, the state can be reduced to "armed bodies of men".
In the modern period the mode of production is capitalism and the oppressed class the working class. In capitalist society all the apparatus of the state, the police, courts and army, are used to preserve the system of wage labour. Therefore, the state's main role is to suppress the labour movement and the working class. The state is therefore not neutral as many politicians would have us believe - all its actions are weighted in favour of the rich in society.
For the working class to take power it would be necessary to construct a new state, a democratic workers' state under the control of the labour movement and working class. The first example Marxists had of what would replace the state after the socialist revolution was the Paris Commune in 1871, as explained by Engels: "The first decree of the Commune was the suppression of the standing army and the substitution for it of the armed people... instead of continuing to be an agent of central government, the police were at once
, stripped of their political attributes and turned into
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State and on on, shot the state, and during a revolutionary period for the working class to carry out this task, it is also necessary for revolutionary organisations to raise carrying out of this task.
In fighting for a new society the task of the labour movement, and particularly of a far-sighted leadership, is to minimise the resistance of the ruling class. This poses the need to weaken, neutralise as far as possible and also win over those social forces upon which the capitalists rest. 'Impossible, declare the ultra-left sects, who counterpose to this empty slogans about 'smashing the state'.
Yet in the Russian revolution the workers won over the "armed bodies of men' in the army to the revolution. In the Iranian revolution the insurrectionary movement of the workers of Tehran was successful in shattering Shah's 'armed forces'
over some 'elite'
professional soldiers, such | as the Republican 'Ah, but it is different with the police reasons the sectarian. Not so, as a cursory examination of history will show. James Larkin in Belfast in 1906/7 not only succeeded in drawing Catholic and Protestant workers together in common struggle, he also won over the police who came out on strike under the leadership of constable Barret. The police also went on strike in 1919 in Liverpool and London. In the same year in Germany one of the involved in the January uprising of the Berlin workers was the attempted removal of the Berlin police chief Eichorn, a United Socialist Party of Germany, by the government. More recently police have either gone on strike or threatened strike action in Nova Scotia, Canada, in Brazil, where the federal police struck, and even the notorious Los Angeles police staged a blue flu, ie a mass absence due to 'sickness'. The labour movement must never forget that the police, particularly the tops, the chief constables etc, are under the sway of the capitalists. Every are deployed against workers or youth they must be vigorously opposed. At the same time efforts must be made to bring influence of the labour movement.
union rights best facilitates this task. There is another important dimension to the issue which is never considered by sectarians. Most workers at this stage look towards the 'state', including the police, to act fairly on behalf of society as a whole'. Moreover the working class and labour movement in Britain is not at the stage where an alternative force, a for orce instance, would be understood or accepted. Therefore it is necessary to take account of the fact that workers' expect answers to how the present state, including the police, can be made to act 'fairly'. It is totally insufficient to baldly state that 'the police are part of the state' and that is the end of the matter.
Engels makes the point that the state is 'armed bodies of men' in the last analysis. This was not a throwaway qualification by Engels but a vital part of a Marxist analysis of the state. The state, including the police, the army, the judiciary, the civil service etc, is also, for example, an arena for the resolution of the conflicting interests of different sections of the ruling class. Sometimes the state can act against immediate sectional capitalist interests, sometimes for the benefit of workers such as in health and safety regulations etc, for the purpose of preserving the capitalist system as a whole.
Similiarly the police are not solely a force for repression. The current Home Office review of police tasks, carried out as a prelude to privatising some of them, has identified 95 separate police functions, including things like missing persons control, lost property, taxi liand so on.
Many workers have concerns about the police but would not at this stage accept a demand for their 'abolition'. They would however support the view that the working class, through elected committees, should control them. HAT DO WE mean concretely by 'consubject to different forms of political control. The first urban police forces were established, with the exception of the Metropolitian Police, as a result of the 1835 Municipal Corporation Act. This Act gave enabling powers to new local borough councils to set-up police forces under the control of watch committees, made up of local councillors. The watch committees appointed the chief constable and all other ranks, controlled pay and discipline, and the work that the police were involved in.
The municipal watch committees reflected the balance of class forces in society. The borough councils were dominated by the industrial and commercial capitalist class. They paid for the police and insisted that they controlled them. Attempts were made by central government to assert control but they were resisted.
But this relationship between the police local watch committees began to change at the beginning of this century. The main reason for this was the development of the working class and with it its influence on local government. After the first world war, with a radicalisation in society generally, universal suffrage was introduced, leading to the election of a number of Labour local authorities. The ruling class feared that they would loose control of the watch committees. necessary for central government to fight for con- After the police strikes of 1918 and 1919 the Police • 15
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Police Act of 1919 introduced the concept centrally and largely uniform system of local police forces. The Act gave the home secretary powers to pass regulations on police pay and conditions. Slowly, any element of local control was being But it was not until 1960 that chief constables were made directly accountable to central govern- Act made decisions ment. Then the 1964 Police over operational questions outside the scope of the police committees. Also, new independent local police committees were set up that were not under local authority control.
The 1970s opened with big political battles. Unemployment, for the first time since the war, was over one million. The Tory government of the day wanted to weaken the trade unions and attempted to do this with the Industrial Relations Act of 1971. Attempts were also made to beef up the with the establishment of Special Patrol Groups (SPGs), to be used in riot and crowd dispersal situations. New technology, computers, radios and specially equipped vans, were also introduced. Robert Mark, Metropolitan Police Commissioner in 1972, commented that the SPGs reserve at demonstrations at which militant elements were thought to cause disorder, and in particular to assist police in the protracted industrial disputes involving dockers and building Commissioner of Police, workers". (Report of the 1972). Mark also wrote later on, in 1978, that the police had learnt their new tactics from Northern "The introduction of snatch squads and wedges in demonstrations, and random searches and roadblocks on the streets, were based on the army's experience in Ulster"
class had carefully prepared a So the ruling police force that was centrally controlled and well equipped to deal with the new situation that had up during the 1970s. These new tactics the miners in 1974 in an attempt to break the strike. Anti-racist demonstrators were also subjected to the brutality of these methods during the battle of Lewisham in 1977 and again in Southall in 1979 when Blair Peach was murdered by a blow to the head by a police truncheon. All of these tactics were also used during the riots in the early 1980s.
It was not enough simply to say 'abolish the police.
This created the beginnings of an opposition to the role of the police within the labour movement. With the election of the Ken Livingstone-led Greater London Council (GLC) in 1981, for example, a debate began on how the police could be 16 • Police NU nl Ý POLL Militani PAY TAX MIS THIS HIM NO POLL TAX FOR MASS NOM PATIENT Militant organised mass non-payment. democratically controlled. It was against this background that Militant developed a programme for the democratic accountability of the police which we fought for in the trade unions and the Labour Party. It was not enough simply to say 'abolish the police. Our programme of demands included: 1. For the police to be returned to the authority of local government police committees, with powers like those of the original watch committees to ap point and dismiss chief constables and senior officers and responsibility for operational policy. 2. For the police committees to ensure a genuinely independent complaints board, comprised of elected representatives.
3. For the police committees to ensure that any within the police racist or fascist sympathisers Who could deny that, through such committees, the labour movement, particularly in areas where there were Labour councils, would have been able to exercise some control over the police? Of course it would not have resolved the question of ending the repressive power of the police, which can only be conclusively decided by the working class com- But the implementation ing to power.
programme would have weakened the ability of the police to act, in industrial disputes, to attack demstrengthened the position of onstrations etc, and the labour movement.
But didn't this programme mis-educate trade unand Labour Party members that the state was, after all, 'neutral, that it could be reformed? No. This programme took the existing level of con-
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sciousness and experience of the working class and leveloped it into challenging the role of the police. preparing the working class for its future task of dismantling the current state apparatus.
N ADDITION, THE content of a particular de-
mand is also determined by the actions of those
who advance it. Many times in history left'
slogans and demands have been used to derail the movement. Militant Labour, however, has combined agitation for a programme demanding democratic accountability of the police, when appropriate opportunities arise, with an uncompromising prosecution of the class struggle which has, on occasions, led us into confrontation with the law in practice not in text books!
For example the Militant-influenced Liverpool city council, under the slogan better to break the law than break the poor , set an illegal budget and waged a struggle against the government to win money for the city. Then, during the anti-poil tax campaign, Militant Labour, particularly in Scotland, organised to stop bailiffs, the sheriff officers in Scotland, from taking the goods of non-payers. This was effective community defence that was organised by mobilising as much of the community and working class as possible, coinciding with the consciousness of the working class at the time and its willingness to struggle. Overall in the anti-poll tax campaign, over 20 members of Militant Labour were jailed.
On last tions, on 8 Labour and
year's two big anti-racist demonstra- May and then on 16 October, Militant YRE members had a very clear under-
YR
YRE stewards, 8.
standing of exactly how and in whose interests the police would be used. Predicting that the police would attempt a provocation on 8 May our stewards were prepared and, on the day, stood firm against the attempts of the riot police to break up the demonstration. The experience of October 16, however, was different.
During the unity meeting to plan the stewarding for the 16 October march, the YRE and Militant Labour argued that similiar stewarding to 8 May should be organised. We explained, on the basis of the police behaviour in discussions on the march route and the pre-demonstration press coverage, that the police were preparing to attack the demonstration. In criticising the ANU's lack of stewarding arrangements we argued that it was irresponsible to encourage people to come on a demonstration and not even attempt to provide adequate stewarding. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members in the meeting accused us of being militaristic and of 'going over the top'. They advocated a sit-down at the point where it was clear that the police intended to provoke a confrontation. We argued that this was a ludicrous and very dangerous strategy.
Militant Labour understood that, whilst the stewards could not substitute themselves for the mass of the people on the demonstration, they could ensure a line of communication through the march and attempt to keep it together and moving like we were able to do on 8 May.
The record needs to be put straight. It was Militant Labour and YRE members who, following the police attack on the march, took the leadership at the front of the demonstration, informing the marchers what was happening. Our stewards directed those at the front to link arms, bringing the three sections of the front of the march which had been split by the police back together again, and got the march moving up the hill to the finishing point. There were some very brave ANL and SWP members involved in that stewarding. The same cannot be said, however, for their leaders who, after the ANL chief steward was injured, were nowhere to be seen.
So it is clear that in practice we have no illusions in the police. We stress that we can have no reliance on the police in our struggle against racism and fascism. We constantly explain that the police's primary role in capitalist society is to protect the rich and privileged and suppress the labour movement. But we also demand that the working class, which is the majority of society, should struggle to assert control over the police through elected, local police committees made up of representatives from the trade unions, community and tenants groups. An approach like this can ensure that our communities and the working class as a whole are prepared adequately to deal with fighting racism, organising defence of the community, but also having a programme to fight for local accountability of the police
Police • 17
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