Anyone who followed the recent Camp for Climate Action at Kingsnorth could have a range of views of the policing of that event. It could be anything from: “The police successfully prevented an extreme element from injuring protestors, police and horses” to “a legitimate and necessary protest went ahead despite an extreme element within the police force, who were committed to suppress it”.
For me, my experience of the policing of the camp is something I’m having some difficulty accepting. As a councillor in Cambridge, I work closely with the police and know the intentions of officers are overwhelmingly genuine.
My experience at the camp was therefore rather unexpected. In many areas, the police stopped even bothering to obey the law or justify their actions. They resorted to psychological measures, on most mornings at 5 a.m., assembling van loads of riot police at the gate as if ready to invade the camp. The most bizarre of these actions was to send a number of police vans down the road at 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning, sirens blazing. When the got to the gate, they stopped and played “The Ride of the Valkyries” (theme from Apocalypse Now) over their loudspeaker before silently disappearing back to their temporary tent city (complete with stables and a swimming pool).
Have I been asleep while law after law has given the police so much power and so little responsibility? Are our police so conditioned to obey from above that they’ll willfully break the law themselves to carry out an order? I’m dumbstruck!
There is something that now seems more fate than mere coincidence. I went to the camp was to run a workshop. Titled “You call this democracy!”, it looked at how party funding, the voting system, and centralised government give so few people any real voice or influence over climate and social issues.
Looking back now, I didn’t realise just how important a topic this is.
We Liberal Democrats, it seems, have a very big fight on our hands. That fight is to wrestle back real accountability and influence for the voters. If we fail, the likely prognosis is that we continue to slide into a scary police state. A state serving, not the interests of the citizens, but instead those of a self-serving few.
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11 Comments
“it looked at how party funding, the voting system, and centralised government give so few people any real voice or influence over climate and social issues.”
You mean, it looked at ways that the Lib Dems might be able to introduce rules to make themselves more relevant? I don’t think that the stupid climate camp protestors who achieved the sum total of absolutely nothing is a particularly good model for promoting electoral reform.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
A state serving, not the interests of the citizens, but instead those of a self-serving few.
But the state originated as a mechanism for the few to benefit at the expense of the many and it will always be so.
Rather than increasing accountability (which tends to translate into bringing more people into the state and giving them power over others – as happened with trade unionism and big businesses), we need to free people from the state, at all levels.
To my knowledge half the point in attending a good demonstration is to make a physical manifestation of the dissent you feel, so a failure to gain a confrontation with authority would prove anti-climactic.
It seems the police gave the protesters what they wanted and reinforced their beliefs.
If the ‘fight’ mentioned in this article is either won or lost the self-serving few will be unrestrained and able to inflict their harm on the resy of us. Instead we must find a way to stop fighting and start working productively together.
Those psychological measures are creepy but don’t add up to any sort of repression or overwheening power by themselves. What they do do is give us an indication of how the police might proceed if they were given more powers.
“But the state originated as a mechanism for the few to benefit at the expense of the many and it will always be so.”
Erm. This is a bit unreconstructedly Marxist, isn’t it? Surely every state originates as a general consent to mutual protection, by way of laws and common defence arrangements, and hence taxes to support the two.
*mutters about vital necessity of medieval history being taught in schools*
A very interesting article and some insightful comments. While not being repressive, Neale’s comments very clearly show how stupid some police are prepared to be. Certainly, I heard some very interesting allegations on the policing of the Miner’s strike which worried me a lot more, but the sources of those comments were not people I would consider impartial.
Regarding the comments:-
Letters from a Tory. Does he/she only attempt to stir? Certainly that comment was not worth the time of day.
Tristan. “we need to free people from the state, at all levels.” and
Orangepan “Instead we must find a way to stop fighting and start working productively together.” These aims are wonderful – but bearing in mind human mature we would need some really practical ideas on how to do it. Even then, there is the question of how to handle the proportion of the population who couldn’t care less about being free and particularly those who actively don’t want to work together.
Alix: I’m not sure about “every state originates as a general consent to mutual protection”. My admittedly sketchy historical knowledge would point to states beginning by a group exerting power over the remainder, and then the liberals coming along and continuously working to take it away from them.
I’ve had two experiences of the police in recent weeks: the first was a consequence of our premises being broken into; the police attended promptly, were polite, intelligent and did everything correctly (apart from noticing that an attempt had been made to kick in the front door!) The second was on the evening that the school holidays began when my sixth form daughter and a (large) number of her friends went off into the countryside to celebrate. They were on public land, out of earshot of any houses, were not causing any damage, were miles outside any alcohol exclusion zone, and were chilling out after their exams having a drink and a smoke. The police spotter plane was sent up and seven police vehicles sent to the scene (well, near it as they were on top of a 300 foot hill with no vehicular access) and they were harrassed out of the area.
In the first instance the police were doing the job we all want them to do: in the second they were doing something that the right-wing press and this oppressive government have sanctioned them to do. Of course there are areas where youth crime is out of control; of course there are people who are prepared to use political protest as a cover for their own violent agenda, but there is something potentially very sinister in the way that the government has demonised the young and those prepared to stand up and protest against their policies. So many people seem to forget their own youth: I wonder whether the members of this government who were young in the 60s and 70s remember all too clearly the radical ferment that existed at that time and are determined as a consequence to ensure that any possible repeat is strangled at birth.
“When the got to the gate, they stopped and played “The Ride of the Valkyries” (theme from Apocalypse Now) over their loudspeaker”
Worth writing to them asking them if they had a licence from the PRS for a public broadcast 🙂
Alix wrote:
“Surely every state originates as a general consent to mutual protection, by way of laws and common defence arrangements, and hence taxes to support the two.”
The present British state originated when a group of French settlers came over here and imposed the feudal system by force. The present Queen derives her jurisdiction from this mediaeval dispensation, though she is German, not French.
Tony Hill wrote:
“The second was on the evening that the school holidays began when my sixth form daughter and a (large) number of her friends went off into the countryside to celebrate. They were on public land, out of earshot of any houses, were not causing any damage, were miles outside any alcohol exclusion zone, and were chilling out after their exams having a drink and a smoke. The police spotter plane was sent up and seven police vehicles sent to the scene (well, near it as they were on top of a 300 foot hill with no vehicular access) and they were harrassed out of the area.”
Horrifyingly, we have a Shadow Cabinet portfolio holder, Julia Goldsworthy MP, who enthusiastically endorses such actions, and Nick Clegg has yet to repudiate her comments.
Anyone wanting the low-down on Kent Police should read R v Kent Police Authority ex parte Godden [1971] 2QB 662. That’s just how they behave towards each other.
Michael Stone languishes in jail for a crime Kent Police know he didn’t commit because Kent Police bribed two prison grasses to commit perjury. Lovely people, Kent Police.
Camp for Climate Action? Is it 1982 at Greenham Common or something? Radical, man. You stick it to the Establishment!
The only down side of the police keeping you awake with Ride of the Valkyries (love it!) is that it makes you dreary pseudo-Marxists even more insufferably pompouse in your smug victimhood.
This isn’t the Lib Dems moving to the left to capture Labour working class towns – it’s the Liberals being what they have been for forty years, sanctimonious middle class beardy muesli eaters. Go away and read Orwell’s denunciation of you in Wigan Pier.
Shame on you “Anonymous” for not showing your true identity.
If I want to call people names, I do at least do it in a way that they can arrive on my doorstep and shout at me.
I was going to write more.. but.. you’re just not worth the time!
But I will add:
A few people have suggested that pressing for democratic reform is about:
– LibDem’s being self serving (we’re the only ones who would reduce our own powers, and in fact, we do this in local government where we create area committees)
– Pseudo-Marxism – Well excuse me! Did I say that I was a Marxist? (I’m actually more a Georgist – see http://fiscalreform.blogspot.com)
Me, I’m a Liberal Democrat. I want to see a small central state with spending and control at the most local level practical.
I want to see people able to organise their local lives in a way that is not dictated from on high.
Climate Camp was one example of that. People organising through non-hierarchical means, not via laws or leaders. Not everyone wants that, but those who do should have the *freedom* to do that. Those freedoms are liberal freedoms, and they’re what I’m here to fight for.
In the same way, “Letters”, I’ll fight every step of the way to ensure that our next government does not end up being the Ashcroft government it looks bribed to be.