Coronation - We Are Walking into a Police State

Police Arrest Protesters for Exercising their Democratic Right to Protest Against Monarchy

Democracy British Style

It was less than two months ago that the Metropolitan Police were described as ‘institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic’. Baroness Louise Casey said that the Black community were ‘over-policed and under-protected.’

Murdered by the Met

It was little more than two years ago that Sarah Everard was murdered by a Police officer, Wayne Couzens, who had been systematically protected by fellow officers when reports of  him exposing himself were made. The last incident was six days before he went on to kidnap and murder Sarah, when Police were given his car registration number and his bank card details by a fast food restaurant.

If Couzens had been arrested at the time Sarah Everard would still be alive. As it is Couzens was given the nickname ‘the rapist’ – a ‘joke’ that fellow officers in the Nuclear Constabulary found highly amusing.

Casey Response to Met Reaction to Report

Couzens was not of course the only incident. 18 months ago two police officers, Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis, were gaoled for sharing  pictures of two dead Black women, nicknamed ‘dead birds’ in two WhatsApp groups, one of which had 41 fellow officers as participants.

Anti-monarchy arrests during UK coronation

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick resigned after a series of scandals. An independent police watchdog revealed shocking evidence Feb. 1 that officers in Charing Cross station had engaged in conduct involving misogyny, homophobia, bullying and sexual harassment between 2016 and 2018.

The report claimed that officers had engaged in sexual activity while on duty, joked about hitting and raping women, and mocked the deaths of black babies and the Holocaust. In published Whatsapp messages, one male officer told to a female officer: “I would happily rape you…if I was single I would happily chloroform you.” Two of the officers investigated were promoted, while nine were left to serve in the Met.

Cressida Dick’s replacement, Sir Mark Rowley shows no inclination to improve matters, having rejected Louise Casey’s finding of institutionalised racism. The National Black Police Association offered to meet him to highlight areas of concern and collaborate on how to change the systemic racism within the force, but was snubbed. 

The Inquiry chaired by Nuala O’Loan, the former police ombudsman in Northern Ireland into the murder of Daniel Morgan, a private eye, found that the Police investigation was riddled with corruption.

The report accused Dick of 'placing hurdles' in their path by refusing to give them access to a vital police database. The HOLMES system which is used by UK police forces to investigate complicated crimes such as serial murders and high-value frauds.

Access to the database was 'essential' because many of the documents were only available in online form, and her refusal caused 'very significant delays', the report stated.

'The Metropolitan Police's lack of candour manifested itself in the hurdles placed in the path of the Panel, such as (then Assistant Commissioner) Cressida Dick's initial refusal to recognise the necessity for the Panel to have access to the HOLMES system,'

Who then was better placed to be given additional powers under the new Public Order Act than the Metropolitan Police? Indeed such was Cruella Braverman’s trust in the Met Police’s ability to abuse whatever powers they were handed that the implementation of the Act was fast tracked just one day after receiving royal assent. Normally it takes months to implement legislation and sometimes parts of that legislation are never implemented.

The POA means that anyone who blocks roads, airports and railways could be jailed for up to 12 months — while anyone who glues themself down could face up to six months behind bars or an unlimited fine.

Police will also be able to stop and search protesters for items such as padlocks, superglue and digging tools if they suspect they are intending to be used at a protest. People caught with these items, with the intention of using them to cause disruption, will also face criminal charges.

In short the POA is an ideal piece of legislation  to hasten the arrival of a Police state. It is the type of legislation which the press would fall over themselves to criticise if Putin or China were to introduce it.

Only one thing will render this Act null and void and that will be a refusal to comply with its provisions by direct action protesters. This is a government that detests any form of direct action whilst being immersed  in serious corruption and law breaking – all of which have gone without investigation by the Met.

According to Transparency International 2021 was the year corruption took centre stage

From the British Government’s COVID-19 response to ministers’ and MPs’ conflicts of interest; from the businesses caught up in bribery scandals to the devastating effect of corruption in defence forces around the world which triggered or aggravated conflicts or led to the total collapse of government.

Its effect was of course felt on the public

Whether that was UK hospitals unable to access high quality or reasonably priced personal protective equipment (PPE) for their staff and patients, planning decisions seemingly based on who you know rather than the public interest, or millions fleeing their homes and countries when the safest place to be should have been at home.

It is therefore no surprise that the Metropolitan Police should pull out all the stops to prevent protests at the Coronation.  It is a case of one undemocratic institution, the Met, giving its full support to another undemocratic institution, the Monarchy.

However the Met Police commanders are nothing if not stupid. They have enabled millions of people to see for themselves the hostility to the democratic right to protest of the Police. The publicity garnered by the protesters because of the decision by the Police to arrest its organisers was invaluable. Even the ever loyal BBC was forced to carry news reports of the heavy handed response of the Met. In that sense and in that sense only, we should be grateful to Mark Rowley.

However we have to ask why the government gave a bunch of racists, rapists, misogynists and corrupt bigots even more powers than they already had given their penchant to abuse their existing powers. There was no popular mandate for the new Public Order Act and it says everything about Starmer’s Labour Party that it failed to make any protest about the new powers still less pledge to repeal it.

Tony Greenstein

There is No Rule of Law When the Police decide that Crime Minister Johnson has Immunity from Prosecution

 Illegally Handing Over Workers’ Details for Blacklisting, Covering up for Murder and Raping Women by Deception - the Met is Above the Law and Institutionally Corrupt

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A lesson to the Police on how they should be doing their job

In 1990 Boris Johnson, then a Telegraph reporter in Brussels, agreed to supply his friend Darius Guppy with the details of a journalist, Stuart Collier, in order that he could have him beaten up. Guppy was later jailed for a jewellery heist. The conversation was recorded. Suffice to say if you or me had been party to a conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm, the Police would have prosecuted. But Johnson was cut from different cloth.

Darren Copeland caught on CCTV

Johnson plots to beat up Stuart Collier

From the 1960’s onwards the Met formed a secretive Special Demonstration Squad whose task was to infiltrate left-wing, environmental and other radical groups. What the Met have never done is to infiltrate fascist groups. In 1999 three bombs planted by neo-Nazi, Darren Copeland exploded in Brick Lane, Brixton and the Admiral Duncan, a gay pub in Soho. Three people were killed and 79 injured.

Bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, Brixton and Brick Lane

The Police had no prior intelligence because fascist groups have never been a target for the Police or Special Branch, despite their gospel of hatred and racism. After all many in the Police share much the same views. Fascists aren’t a threat to capitalism, they are the last resort of the system.

Mark Kennedy – the Secret Police Rapist

The film above shows one particular specimen Mark Stone aka Mark Kennedy, who formed a relationship with a female activist based on deceit and lies. What he and other officers had done was commit rape by deception. There was no informed consent. But of course the Police don’t prosecute their own unless they are forced to.

In the case of Wayne Couzens, whose affectionate name from fellow officers was ‘the rapist’, police were left with no option but to prosecute as he had both raped murdered Sarah Everard and left a trail of clues that even the most stupid police officer could not ignore.

Police Attack on Peaceful Women’s Vigil at Clapham Common

However the Police got their revenge when they physically attacked a peaceful womens’ vigil at Clapham Common. All of this presided over by lesbian Commissioner, the appropriately named Cressida Dick. The seething anger of the Met at the humiliation they had suffered, with the murder by a serving officer, was visited on the women at the vigil. The Police have absolute discretion as to how they enforce the law and in this case they used the COVID regulations as a pretext for an unprovoked attack.

In 2009 ICO investigators from the Information Commissioner's Office raided the offices of the Consulting Association in Droitwich, Worcestershire. The nature of the information in them could only have been supplied by the police or security services. The information was for the purposes of a blacklist funded by eight of the country's major construction firms. It resulted in thousands of people being unable to get work for decades. Although Ian Kerr, who ran the Consulting Agency was fined £5,000 the construction firms who financed the operation, such as Balfour Beatty, and Robert McCalpine, escaped any penalty.

The workers concerned had committed no crime apart from standing up for their rights. But in the eyes of the Met this was a crime. The Met refused to name those they had spied on. Operation Reuben found an officer called Mark Jenner had collected information after he infiltrated the construction union UCATT between 1995 and 2000.

The report says that Jenner, who used the alias Cassidy, provided information on 300 people - and 16 of those appeared in the illegal blacklist database.

Roy Bentham, joint secretary of Blacklist Support Group, said

‘The police are supposed to uphold law and order, not spy on perfectly democratic organisations such as trade unions,’.

‘Blacklisting is a national scandal and confirmation that the police colluded with this shameful and unlawful activity is beyond the pale.’

What all of the above demonstrates is that the Police, in particular the Met, which also functions as a national police force, are a highly political force. That is why its Commissioner, Cressida Dick, is appointed by the Home Secretary.

In short the Met is not only institutionally corrupt but it is racist, sexist and anti-working class. This should not be any surprise as the function of the Police is to preserve and uphold the existing political order which is a society where a tiny but rich elite preside over poverty and deprivation.

That is the function of the Police in all societies. The last institution to fall in any popular uprising or revolution is the Police which is why those on the left who consider them ‘workers in uniform’ rather than agents of the State are wrong.

It is no surprise that Keir Starmer reacted with fury to the suggestion of Black Lives Matter that the Police should be defunded.  Instead he turned on BLM describing it as a ‘moment’. At the 2021 Labour Party Conference we were treated to the spectacle of armed police patrolling aisles and intimidating delegates (including removing one heckler) during Starmer’s one and half hour speech about his family.

The Police are an integral part of the British state. The state is there to defend the existing class inequalities in society and that is why it targets the left, not the right. However friendly individual officers might be they are there to serve the interests of our enemies. That is why, when the Miners went on strike in 1984-5 the Police acted as Thatcher’s cavalry.

Hence why it is so absurd that a party that calls itself a party of labour should have formed a Friends of the Police group to sit aside Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel. MPs Jessica Morden, Holly Lynch and Liz Kendall who fronted this pathetic organisation can be considered Labour Traitors of the Year, or more succinctly scabs.

All of this is the backdrop to a new raft of repressive legislation from Boris Johnson from the Spycops to the Police, Crime and Sentencing Acts and Nationality and Borders Bill which Starmer has barely opposed. As the economic crisis develops, exacerbated by the COVID crisis – which itself is a crisis of capitalism – we shall see an ever more repressive police force with the pretence of ‘community policing’ dropped. There is no doubt whatsoever which side of the class struggle Starmer and his Zionist friends will stand.

We should also not forget the Nuala O’Loan Inquiry into the murder of Daniel Morgan which found the Metropolitan police was “institutionally corrupt”.  Cressida Dick was personally censured for obstruction by an independent inquiry set up to review the murder of the private detective Daniel Morgan.

The findings of into Morgan’s killing in 1987 triggered calls for Dick to resign. His brother, Alastair, denounced the actions of Britain’s biggest police force.

The panel’s findings were a victory for the 34-year long struggle for justice by the Morgan family during which they said they endured being “lied to, fobbed off, bullied [and] degraded” by the Met.

Within hours the Met rejected the report’s key findings, and dismissed Morgan’s call for Dick to step down. The two people who could oust Dick – the Home Secretary and Mayor Sadiq Khan instead gave her their ‘full confidence’.

Corrupt officers shielded the killers and the panel said a murder inquiry that was probably “solvable” was undermined, perhaps fatally.

Concerns about police wrongdoing, and links between corrupt officers and sections of the tabloid media, led the government to order an inquiry in 2013. Dick, instead of cooperating with the panel obstructed it. The panel accused the Met of placing concerns about its reputation above fighting corruption in its ranks.

We should remember the lack of accountability of the police when we hear talk of the ‘rule of law’.  The law is a class instrument used by the rich and powerful to cement their rule. As the old saying went:

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone

When we take things we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who takes things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape

If they conspire the law to break;

This must be so but they endure

Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

And geese will still a common lack

Till they go and steal it back.

Tony Greenstein