Julie Hyland writes: \u201cFrom foul deeds endless tragedy arises,\u201d the World Socialist Web Site wrote, commenting on the state execution of innocent Brazilian worker, Jean Charles de Menezes, by plainclothes policemen on a London subway train on July 22, 2005.<\/p>\n
Events have tragically confirmed that warning. In the years since Menezes\u2019 killing, for which no one has ever been held to account, the legal framework of a police state has been enacted in Britain.<\/p>\n
The implications of this have been made clear over the last weeks.<\/p>\n
Since the start of April, some 300 people have been arrested and detained in just three police operations. The vast majority of these were rounded up in two of these operations, both focusing on a supposed threat to \u201cpublic order\u201d.<\/p>\n
Maintaining public order is now a pseudonym for the criminalising of political dissent.<\/p>\n
Even before the G20 summit of world leaders began in London, five people were arrested in Plymouth under the Terrorism Act, reportedly accused of possessing \u201cmaterial relating to political ideology\u201d.<\/p>\n
All were released without charge, but the fact that political activism is considered a criminal offence in 21st century Britain was subsequently writ large on the streets of the capital.<\/p>\n
Beginning April 1, a massive police operation was set in place around the G20 summit. Hundreds of people, legally exercising their right to protest, were \u201ckettled\u201d\u2013forcibly held behind police cordons for up to seven hours\u2013in the side streets of central London.<\/p>\n
It was behind one of these cordons that Ian Tomlinson\u2013attempting to make his way home after work\u2013was attacked from behind by a baton-wielding masked police officer. He died moments later.<\/p>\n
Eyewitness accounts, video footage and photo stills provide conclusive proof that the police\u2019s attack against Tomlinson was par for the course during the protests.<\/p>\n
The police actions had nothing to do with ensuring \u201cpublic safety\u201d. If anything, they constituted a deliberate attempt to provoke disorder as the pretext for further repression. This is underscored by evidence of plain-clothes officers armed with batons striking out at demonstrators, as well as the participation of the Territorial Support Group\u2013a special quasi-paramilitary police unit which was involved in several of the most publicised incidents, and whose identification numbers were concealed.<\/p>\n
Downloads of film footage of the police in action at the G20 protests is said to be particularly high in Brazil\u2013Menezes\u2019 birthplace, and a country bitterly familiar with police savagery against political dissidents.<\/p>\n
For good reason, the government attempted to ensure that its \u201cpublic order\u201d policy would not see the light of day. While police now routinely photograph and demand the identification and addresses of people taking part in lawful demonstrations, watching the watchers is illegal in New Labour\u2019s Orwellian dystopia.<\/p>\n
Less than one month before the protests, section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 came into force, providing for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone taking photographs of police officers.<\/p>\n
In one instance during the G20 protests, recorded on camera, police officers instructed photographers and news crews to leave the vicinity within 30 minutes or face arrest.<\/p>\n
This in a country whose population is now one of the most heavily surveilled in the world. The UK has the greatest concentration of closed circuit TV cameras per head of population. Moreover, without any parliamentary debate let alone public consent, recent legislation has compelled all Internet service providers to retain data from emails and website visits for up to one year. Details of phone calls and text messages can be similarly stored, and made available to the government and other official agencies.<\/p>\n
As if such powers were not enough for police to be aware of the movements of any potentially \u201csignificant\u201d individuals, on April 13, police in Nottingham carried out the unprecedented \u201cpre-emptive\u201d arrests of 114 people. No crime had been committed. The arrests were made purely on the basis that the police \u201csuspected\u201d a plan by environmentalists to target a power station in Nottingham. While no charges have as yet been made, the arrests were used to mount a trawling operation, raiding homes and seizing personal papers and computers.<\/p>\n
In between the London and Nottingham operations, police in the north-west of England mounted major \u201canti-terror\u201d raids, involving dozens of armed officers. Twelve men, mainly foreign students, were detained as part of what was claimed to be an operation against an imminent terrorist attack.<\/p>\n
Once again no charges have been made. Under British anti-terror laws, suspects can be held for 28 days without charge. It is widely reported that no evidence has so far been recovered to substantiate claims of a terrorist emergency.<\/p>\n
All the recent police operations are predicated on the more than 200 pieces of separate anti-terror legislation enacted by the Labour government over the last years, and consolidated in the Terrorism Act 2006 which criminalises the mere expression of opinion deemed unacceptable by the Home Secretary.<\/p>\n
At the time, then Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the measures on the grounds that political exigencies meant the \u201crules of the game\u201d had changed.<\/p>\n
This established a new legal principle\u2013guilty on the say-so of the powers-that-be. The \u201crules\u201d now in operation are those where armed police swoops and the targeting of political dissent is a matter of routine. In February this year, in a move which received barely any coverage, the Association of Chief Police Officers set up the Confidential Intelligence Unit, targeted at \u201cdomestic extremists\u201d. Assuming the \u201ccounter-subversion\u201d functions usually conducted by MI5, the CIU is dedicated to the surveillance of radical groups, including placing informers amongst their numbers.<\/p>\n
The assault on civil liberties is not specific to Britain. It is a tendency evidenced throughout the so-called \u201cadvanced democracies\u201d. Indeed proclamations of \u201cdemocracy\u201d increasingly function as a thin veneer, behind which the state has abrogated to itself near autocratic powers.<\/p>\n
That this finds no principled opposition from within the ruling establishment or its liberal \u201ccritics\u201d must serve as a warning.<\/p>\n
The essential driving force behind the adoption of such dictatorial methods is not the maintenance of \u201cpublic order\u201d, but the need to defend the existing order, preserving the wealth and power of a privileged few at the expense of working people under conditions of the greatest breakdown in the world capitalist economy since the 1930s.<\/p>\n
The defence of democratic rights requires breaking the monopoly of the financial oligarchy and its representatives over political life. This can only be achieved through the independent initiative of the working class, fighting for the reorganisation of society on a socialist basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Julie Hyland writes: \u201cFrom foul deeds endless tragedy arises,\u201d the World Socialist Web Site wrote, commenting on the state execution of innocent Brazilian worker, Jean Charles de Menezes, by plainclothes policemen on a London subway train on July 22, 2005. Events have tragically confirmed that warning. In the years since Menezes\u2019 killing, for which no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614,1615],"tags":[55],"class_list":{"0":"post-5414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-surveillance-big-brother","7":"category-uk-news","8":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}