Akashma Online News

Posted on Akashma Online News

Posted by Marivel Guzman

12 November 2011

dis·sent  (d-snt)

The scale of the police operation mounted Wednesday against a relatively small and entirely peaceful protest against UK education cuts shows that the ruling elite is no longer prepared to tolerate any form of political and social opposition.

According to the varying estimates of the organisers, the media and the police, the deployment of 4,000 officers, many in full riot gear, represents a police-protester ratio of one-to-one or two-to-one.

New Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe described the protest as a test of his policy of “Total Policing.” This is what it looked like: London was placed on virtual lock-down, with all major roads along the march’s route blocked off by ranks of police, riot vans, mounted officers and ten-foot-high barricades.

Here To Serve and Protect: Law enforcement officials shall at all times fulfill the duty imposed on them by law, by serving the community and by protecting all persons against illegal acts, consistent with the high degree of responsibility required by their profession. Law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons. Law enforcement officials shall not commit any act of corruption, abuse of power, or excessive force The term "law enforcement officials" includes all officers of the law, whether appointed or selected, who exercise police powers, especially the powers of arrest or detention. In countries where police powers are exercised by military authorities, whether uniformed or not, or by State security forces, the definition of law enforcement officials shall be regarded as including such services.

Marchers were met at the rail, underground and coach stations and handed an 11-page brochure, with the capitalized title “TOTAL POLICING” on the front and back. It warned that police would use section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 to search people and enforce the removal of masks.

The march was dragooned by ranks of police at the front, back and both sides along the three-mile route. Helicopters circled overhead, making extensive videos of those taking part.

In a further provocation, the march was stopped every ten metres, meaning that a three-mile route took three hours to walk. This periodic kettling enabled the police to go into the crowd at certain points, pushing and barging people in the hope of provoking a reaction.

A statement issued on the day warned that the planned rally at the London Wall had to end in less than an hour and the area had to be completely cleared in two hours. An attempt to set up a tent camp in Trafalgar Square, in solidarity with the Occupy protest at St Paul’s Cathedral, was cleared in minutes as police dragged away those involved.

Supporters of the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest take part in a mass meditation on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

The effort by a group of electricians—striking against management threats to cut their wages by up to 35 percent—to join up with the student protest was similarly met with police violence. The electricians’ march was encircled so they were virtually imprisoned. When some tried to break away, riot police waded in with batons and knocked workers to the ground. Police were reportedly armed with stun grenades. Names and addresses were taken under the authority of Section 60 of the Public Order Act.

The Unite union encouraged workers to march to parliament for a lobby of MPs. This sparked shouts of “We want to march with the students!”

As the march set off, hundreds of electricians marched towards Fleet Street where they broke through police lines. Police then drew batons and contained a section of the workers.

Before the march, the commander in charge, Simon Pountain, told a press conference that the use of water cannon was not planned, but plastic bullets had been authorised—the first time ever in England.

Rubber-bullet injuries induced by MA/RA 88 bullet

Over 450 letters were sent out warning anyone arrested in connection with previous public order offences that a repeat offence would lead to arrest and trial “at the earliest opportunity.” Many of these letters were sent to people with no previous convictions, pointing to the existence of a police database of those whose sole “crime” was to have engaged in a previous protest.

In an article reprinted in the Police Oracle, the Guardian’s crime correspondent blithely described the pre-authorisation of baton rounds and the sending of threatening letters as nothing new. “What is new,” she said, was the decision by Pountain to make this public.

On 09 November 2011, Baton rounds and public order policing

Metropolitan Police Service officers are deployed to facilitate peaceful protests and that is the aim today. A range of tactics are available to us if there is criminality and violence associated with the event, including the authority to deploy baton rounds in extreme circumstances – however at this moment in time there is no intention to deploy baton rounds.

Officers policing the route will not be armed with baton rounds. These are carried by a small number of trained officers. This is a tactic which has always been available to deploy in the most extreme circumstances.

To give context to their use, the MPS had authority to use baton rounds during the disorder this summer but did not do so. This tactic requires pre-authority, and would take time to deploy, and is one of a range of tactics we have had available for public order, and not used, in the past.

Authorisation for baton rounds was given during the summer rioting in Britain’s cities, she said, and “perhaps less well known… they were also authorised for use during the student demonstration against cuts a year ago.”

The police are also to be given additional powers, she noted, by Home Secretary Theresa May, whereby a “police superintendent will be able to clear the public out of a specific area during a demonstration—a power not available since the Riot Act was removed from the statute book in 1973.”

Last October’s student protest saw over 150 arrests, both during and after the event. This summer’s riots—provoked by the police killing of an unarmed man—were followed by over 2,000 arrests and over 11,000 prosecutions with long custodial sentences handed out for the most trivial offences.

A similar picture is repeated internationally. Wherever workers and young people seek to protest the imposition of savage austerity cuts, they are met with brutal repression.

In Greece, for example, the October 20 general strike protest was attacked by 15,000 riot police and Syntagma Square was flooded with tear gas. In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street protests spread nationally after two weeks in large measure in response to the October 1 arrest of 700 protesters—almost one-third—of those demonstrating on the Brooklyn Bridge. Since then, various local police forces have mounted attacks using riot gear, tear gas and other weapons, bringing the national total of those arrested to over 3,000.

Observations of a Jailed Journalist A journalist reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protest is arrested for doing his job. He documents several cases of excessive police force, including police pepper spraying women who were already restrained behind a barrier. This is a symptom of the ills of our society. Until we can act civilly towards each other we cannot affect true social reform. We lose when the people in power, in this case the police, can use any means to achieve their goals.

The resort to repressive measures is a measure of the extreme polarisation between the classes.

In Britain, the Riot Act now being cited was originally drafted in 1714, making rioting punishable by death. This was reduced to transportation for life in 1837.

Its most famous usage was in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in Manchester, when a cavalry charge against 80,000 protesters demanding parliamentary reform and relief from crushing economic hardship killed 15 and injured 700.

In Glasgow, on Black Friday 1919, riot police and 10,000 troops were despatched against workers campaigning for shorter work hours. Black Friday took place in the aftermath of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, day that John Reed died in 1920, at a time when Britain’s elite feared a “Bolshevist uprising.” The fact that similar powers are being enacted today, first covertly and now amid official fanfare, should be a warning to the working class in Britain, Europe and internationally.

Today, the vast majority of economic experts — both on the Left and on the Right — have come to the conclusion that Greece is insolvent. It just cannot realistically repay its overwhelming debt while the economy keeps contracting as a result of the brutish austerity measures that Ackermann and Trichet have been prescribing.

Today, a fabulously wealthy oligarchy dictates all aspects of social life in pursuit of ever-greater personal enrichment. Under conditions of worsening economic crisis, this translates into demands for cuts and austerity for millions, for which there is no possibility of securing a democratic mandate.

This determines the moves by bourgeois governments around the world to enact measures characteristic of a police state and, in Greece, the threat of a military coup.

Revolution is coming. A new fiscal, economic and political order will be established. And given what you see about the world around you, the corruption, the fraud, the crimes…do you see any way around this? I want to see corrupt politicians and businessmen in handcuffs, making a long and painful perp walk. I want to see power returned to The People.

The response of workers and young people must be the building of a mass socialist movement and the adoption of a revolutionary perspective for a truly democratic and egalitarian society, based on the expropriation of the oligarchy and the organization of production to meet the social rights of all to education, health care, housing and a well-paid job.

Chris Marsden

More On Global Protests…

Sacrament California:By Kevin Kearney,12 November 2011

Sacramento—the state capital of California and the home of Democratic Governor Jerry Brown—has spearheaded efforts to criminalize the Occupy protests over the last month.

Just days after 700 anti-Wall Street protesters were trapped on the Brooklyn Bridge by the New York Police Department and arrested, officials in Sacramento, California quickly followed suit, initiating the first arrests of Occupy protesters on the West Coast.

First police action against Occupy Canada movement—more planned:By Carl Bronski,11 November 2011

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, police in London, Ontario forcibly evicted several hundred supporters of the Occupy Canada movement who, two weeks ago, established a tent community in that city’s Victoria Park.

The mass eviction, staged in the dead of night, was the first such police action in Canada against the Occupy movement. It came during the same week that mayors and police chiefs from municipalities across the country began to publicly issue eviction threats against the Occupy encampments that have sprung up in at least twenty cities from coast to coast.