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Marxism and the state: an exchange
2. Policy of Force and the Need for Democratic
Control
The riots which erupted in Brixton, Toxteth and other cities
in the summer of 1981 once again focused attention on the role of the police.
In particular, they highlighted the almost complete lack of accountability, and
the need for the labour movement to campaign for the democratisation of the
police.
The explosion of anger on the streets arose from the terrible
conditions faced by workers in the inner-city areas, especially black workers
and youth: mass unemployment, rotten housing, inadequate education, health and
social facilities etc. But the street clashes also reflected widespread
resentment and anger at the police which had built up over a period of years.
The labour movement, while defending workers' rights to defend their areas from
attack, cannot support looting, arson and petrol-bombing as forms of protest.
However, it has to be recognised that in almost every case the riots were
sparked off by provocative police action. In Brixton, as was soon revealed,
there was the intensive Swamp '81 operation, and a number of brutal arrests and
raids. Similarly, in Toxteth a number of arbitrary, heavy-handed arrests
sparked off the conflict. These particular incidents, however, were only the
tip of the iceberg.
In March 1979, Lambeth Labour council, completely dissatisfied
with its lack of control over policing in the area, set up its own Working
Party on Community/Police Relations. It concluded (in January 1980) that there
was evidence of widespread racism by the police and that they were regarded,
particularly by black people, as "an army of occupation". In London and other
cities there has been growing anger at the racial bias of the police. The
increasing number of "passport raids" has highlighted the police's role in
enforcing racialist immigration laws. There is also anger over racial attacks.
In the past five years 26 black people have been murdered, with only one or two
arrests for these crimes. In the London area there were 2,426 violent attacks
on Asians alone in 1980. Very few of these crimes were solved.
In Brixton and other areas of London there was also a strong
reaction against the intervention of the Special Patrol Group. Few of the black
youth or Labour activists could forget the SPG's responsibility for the killing
of Blair Peach after the anti-NF demonstration in Southall (23 April 1979).
Before the Brixton upheaval, the inquest on the Deptford fire had emphasised
the inability and apparent reluctance of the police seriously to investigate
this horrendous crime as a racialist attack. Protest from Labour MPs and civil
rights groups had also drawn attention to the scandal of deaths of suspects in
police custody. Between January 1970 and June 1979, 245 people died in police
custody, with the rate rising from seven a year to forty-eight a year. It was
the refusal of the Liverpool police chief, Kenneth Oxford, to reveal the
contents of an internal inquiry into the death of Jimmy Kelly which brought
about a head-on collision between the Labour councillors on the area police
authority and the Chief Constable. Oxford arrogantly expressed the attitude of
hard-line police chiefs towards elected police committees. He attacked some
councillors for their "vituperative, misinformed comments", and reportedly told
members of the police authority to "keep out of my force's business." Liverpool
councillors decided to set up a working party to look into the "role and
responsibility" of the police authority. After this reported in February 1980,
Councillor Margaret Simey, a long-standing member of the authority, commented:
"I realise now that there is no hope of running a big modern police force on
rules that are no more than a gentleman's agreement" (Weekend World, ITV, 23
March 1980). "Mr Oxford does not seem to think the police committee is worth
proper consideration, and the Tory majority do not seem to think that there is
anything wrong with that" (Observer, 21 October 1979).
The clashes between Labour councillors and police chiefs in
Lambeth (Brixton) and Liverpool (Toxteth) were early warnings of the explosions
to come. The conflict over the role of the police authorities in these two key
areas, as well as in West Yorkshire (where there was also a council enquiry in
1978) and Lewisham (where in 1980 the council threatened to withhold its
contribution to the Metropolitan police), underlined the complete lack of
democratic accountability as far as the police were concerned.
Yet the police were not always unaccountable to local
authorities. When, after the formation of the Metropolitan police in 1829,
police forces were gradually created in the boroughs, they were under the
control of "watch committees" made up of council members, who appointed the
constables, and their officers, and fixed their pay and controlled their work.
When the county councils were reformed in the 1880s, "standing joint
committees" were created, comprising of half county councillors and half local
magistrates, with similar powers to the borough watch committees. "The control
of the watch committees was absolute," writes one historian of the police (T A
Crichley, History of the Police in England and Wales). "In its hands lay the
sole power to appoint, promote and punish men of all ranks, and it had powers
of suspension and dismissal. The watch committee prescribed the regulations for
the force, and subject to the approval of the town council determined the rates
of pay." In some boroughs the chief police officer was required to report
weekly to the watch committee. There was, however, continuous pressure from the
government to establish stronger central control of the police; but this was
resisted by local interests. Throughout the 19th century the Home Secretary's
main role was that of ensuring all areas recruited and maintained adequate
police forces, which was carried out through the inspectors of
constabulary.
This relationship was not just the product of administrative
convenience. It reflected the balance of class forces, and the political
relations flowing from them. The borough councils were dominated by the
industrial and commercial capitalist class. They paid for the police through
the rates, and therefore they insisted they controlled the police. The
industrial middle class were suspicious of central government, which they
associated with extravagant and unnecessary expenditure, and which they feared
would interfere in their affairs on behalf of the aristocratic oligarchy which
dominated central government. The propertied middle class which championed
parliamentary government took it for granted that a body like the police, which
potentially had enormous power, should be democratically controlled.
This, however, was in the era before the working class had
become an independent political force. Even at the end of the 19th century only
a small minority of workers had the vote. When the great majority of working
class men gained the vote in 1918 (all women in 1928) the property owning
classes changed their tune. They were no longer concerned about the
aristocratic oligarchy, which had been eclipsed by industrial capitalists, but
they certainly feared the growing strength of the labour movement. The end of
the First World War in 1918 brought a massive radicalisation of the workers,
with enormous struggles and strike battles. Labour councillors began to be
elected in many towns and cities, with the emergence of a number of
Labour-controlled councils. The .attempt of the state to take control of the
police out of the hands of local government and concentrate it centrally was
also made more urgent by the police strikes of 1918 and 1919.
After the strikes, the Desborough Committee was set up to
overhaul the whole police structure, and many of its recommendations were
adopted. One recommendation was that the power of appointment, promotion and
discipline should be transferred from the watch committees to Chief Constables.
This, however, was still resisted in Parliament, and the powers remained
formally in the hands of watch committees until 1964. However, in one way and
another the powers of Chief Constables were considerably strengthened. So too
was the "informal" central influence exerted by the Home Office (and the
Scottish Office), especially as central government now provided half the cost
of maintaining local forces. The element of democratic control through the
watch committees was slowly but surely strangled. The last vestiges of
accountability, moreover, were allowed to disappear largely without opposition
from the labour movement, controlled in that period by the right-wing
leadership.
The 1960 Royal Commission on the Police concluded that the
main problem of police accountability was controlling Chief Constables. They
"should be subject to more effective supervision," said the reportbut
this was to be done by making Chief Constables more accountable to central
government, not to local watch committees. The Royal Commission's
recommendations were put into effect by the 1964 Police Act (and the Police
(Scotland) Act, 1967). Borough watch committees and county standing joint
committees were replaced by police authorities, made up of two thirds
councillors and one third magistrates. Local authorities still paid for half of
the cost of the forces, but their Chief Constables, backed up by the Home
Office, quickly established the principle that "operational questions" were
outside police committees' scope. In practice, the 1964 Act institutionalised
and legalised the situation established after 1945. The new police committees
are not even committees of the local councils, but independent statutory
bodies. This effectively divorces them from council control. In some
authorities, like Liverpool, the councillors are not even allowed to ask
questions on the police authority.
In theory, the police authorities appoint the Chief Constable
and can dismiss the Chief Constable "in the interests of police efficiency."
But these powers are strictly subject to the Home Secretary's agreement. In
theory, the police committees can question the Chief Constable on his annual
reports, or ask him for special reports. In practice this is very difficult.
Most Chief Constables' annual reports give very little information on policing
methods, and they particularly avoid the most contentious areas of
policing.
Most of the police chiefs strongly resist all proposals for
increased democratic accountability on the grounds that it would subject the
police to "political control". They try to perpetuate the myth, important for
gaining public acceptance of their role in the past, that the police are an arm
of a "neutral" state. They are, according to this view, "above" politics and
sectional interests, and ultimately answerable to the equally "neutral" and
"independent" judiciary. The recent changes in police policy themselves refute
this liberal myth.
The Police Act and other legislation of the early 1960s for
the most part merely institutionalised changes which had already taken place.
But it was the stormy events which opened the 1970s, a new decade of crisis,
which brought the really significant changes in police planning and training.
The Tory government under Edward Heath came to office in 1970 with unemployment
over 1 million for the first time in postwar Britain. The Tories set out to
take on the working class, aiming to break the power of the trade unions
through the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. But Heath's moves against the trade
unions provoked massive opposition from the organised workers, which eventually
defeated his attempt to use the law and special courts to shackle the unions.
The most significant of the industrial battles which shook the Heath government
was the 1972 miners' strike. The decisive battle took place at Saltley Gates
where 30,000 miners' pickets and other industrial workers blockaded the
Midlands coal depot. The police were defeated and forced to retreat. This was
not only a crushing blow to the Tory government, but demonstrated to the
capitalists the weakness of their state when faced with organised, mobilised
workers.
In response, the government instigated an immediate review of
its security policy, covering everything from policing the streets to dealing
with an insurrection. The strategists of capital were preparing for the
possibility of revolution. Raymond Carr, the Tory Home Secretary, set up a
National Security Committee to review all aspects of main- taming public order
and to produce new "contingency plans". The committee reported in 1975, after
the return of the Labour government. Labour changed the name of the body to the
vaguer "Civil Contingencies Committee", but adopted all its main
recommendations. This major review led to a programme of equipping police
forces with modern technology for surveillance and holding records and with new
riot gear. New training meant the police were being prepared for riots and for
confrontations with demonstrations, strike pickets, etc. More special units
were set up to act as para-military squads as and when required. In 1977 riot
shields appeared on the streets for the first time in Britain (apart from
Northern Ireland) when the police moved against anti-fascist demonstrators
protesting against a National Front march through Lewisham. At the same time,
however, plans were made for the use of the army to back up the police in
emergencies. Joint operations, as at London's Heathrow airport in 1974, were
staged, supposedly to counter alleged terrorist threats, but clearly aimed at
getting the public used to seeing the army operating with the police on the
streets. Then, in 1977/78, the Labour government actually called out 20,000
troops to take over fire-fighting duties and break the strike of the firemen
taking action against Labour's pay-restraint policy.
These developments make it clear that the "iron fist" thinking
of the Andertons and McNees does not merely express the hardline outlook of a
number of reactionary police chiefs, but reflects the new perspective of the
strategists of the ruling class themselves. They have recognised that the
relative social peace of the post-war period ended with the ebbing of the
economic boom. They see that the coming period, with the continued catastrophic
decline of British capitalism and the inevitable erosion of living standards,
will be one of head-on conflict with the working class. They have therefore
discarded the old 'liberal', 'democratic' face of the British ruling class and
instead are presenting a brutal, repressive visage. These developments,
particularly with the perspective of the Andertons, make it vitally important
for the labour movement to campaign for the democratisation of the police.
If the working class is to preserve the economic gains and the
democratic rights that it has wrested from the capitalists in the past, it must
carry through the socialist transformation of society. Past gains cannot be
preserved indefinitely within the rotten framework of a crisis-ridden
capitalism. In transforming society, it is Utopian to think that the existing
apparatus of the capitalist state can be taken over and adapted by the working
class. In a fundamental change of society, all the existing institutions of the
state will be shattered and replaced by new organs of power under the
democratic control of the working class. While basing itself on the perspective
of the socialist transformation of society, however, the labour movement must
advance a programme which includes policies which come to grips with the
immediate problems posed by the role of the police.
The movement must campaign along the following lines:
-
The police must be returned to the
authority of local government police committees, with powers like those of the
original watch committees. The local police committees should have the power to
appoint and dismiss Chief Constables and senior officers. They should be
responsible not only for the police's physical resources but for "operational
questions", i.e. day-to-day policing policies. The Metropolitan Police, which
at present is only formally accountable to the Home Secretary, should also be
made accountable to a democratic Greater London police committee
-
The police committees should ensure a
genuinely independent complaints procedure under the complaints board composed
of democratically elected representatives. They should ensure that the
appropriate disciplinary procedures are implemented.
-
The police committees should ensure
that any racist elements or fascist sympathisers within the police are weeded
out of the force.
Through such police committees, the labour movement, in areas
where Labour controlled the local councils, would be able to establish
democratic checks and controls on the role of the police. In the past, before
the working class had emerged as an independent political force, the spokesmen
of big business and the middle class insisted that the police were
democratically accountable. Now, the labour movement, which represents the
overwhelming majority in society, must demand that democratic accountability is
extended to cover this force which, it is claimed, exists to protect the
interests of the public.
Labour must also demand:
-
The abolition of the Special Patrol
Group and other similar units.
-
The abolition of the Special Branch
and the destruction of political files and computer records not connected with
criminal investigations.
-
The right of the police to an
independent, democratic trade union organisation to defend their interests as
workers.
3. Fighting Crime?
"Law and order" has long been a favourite electioneering
slogan of the Tories. They try to represent any criticism of the police as an
attempt to undermine "the fight against crime". Calls for democratic
accountability are portrayed as "politically motivated" moves to undermine the
police's "neutral" and "impartial" role. At the 1977 Tory Party conference, for
instance, Whitelaw claimed that it was "part of a left-wing mythology" that
"there was something despicable, almost immoral, in discussing the prevention
of crime at all." Contrary to Tory mythology, however, Marxists are not opposed
to the police taking action to catch criminals and to protect people's safety
and personal property. Working-class people are naturally concerned about
crime, and especially alarmed about increasing violence. But the Tones, by
elevating the "moral" issues and the abstractions of "law" and "legality", want
to turn attention away from the social roots of crime.
What better answer to the Tories than the comments of the
Boston Police Commissioner, Robert Di Grazia? "We are not letting the public in
on our era's dirty little secret," he wrote: "that those who commit the crime
that worries citizens the mostviolent street crimeare, for the most
part, the products of poverty, unemployment, broken homes, rotten education,
drug addiction and alcoholism, and other social ills about which the police can
do little, if anything." Di Grazia does not draw any radical conclusion about
the problem of upholding "justice" in society divided by extremes of wealth and
povertywithin a system based on the legalised expropriation of workers'
surplus value by the capitalist class. Nevertheless, Di Grazia eloquently
denounces the "politicians (who) get away with law and order rhetoric that
reinforces the mistaken notion that the policein ever greater numbers and
with ever more gadgetrycan alone control crime."
His criticisms certainly apply to Thatcher's government.
Unemployment, Mrs Thatcher said after Brixton erupted in April 1981, was not
the cause. The real cause, she implied, was the breakdown of "respect for the
law" and the erosion of "moral values". The Tories cannot accept that their
economic policies which have had a shattering effect on the youth, have helped
create the conditions for conflict on the streets. If there has been a
breakdown of previously accepted social norms of behaviour and of traditional
morality, they cannot see that the terrible alienation of young people created
by the profit system is a powerful contributing factor. Like the politicians Di
Grazia criticises, Thatcher and Whitelaw simply back the arming of the police
with more powerful equipment: riot gear, water cannon, CS gas, plastic bullets,
and, increasingly, firearms. They also support heavier sentences in the courts,
and a tougher regime in prisons and juvenile detention centres.
The Tories' approach reflects the thinking of the professional
police chiefs. Some, it is true, have spoken out against the crude, hard-line
stance of the Andertons and Oxfords. John Alderson, Chief Constable of Devon
and Cornwall (who retired in April 1982) is a notable example. Alderson said
after the riots: "One thing is certain, it is no answer to resort to brute
force to control people." Alderson, whose liberal approach is in sharp contrast
to that of most other police chiefs, advocates "community policing". In his
view, the primary concern of the police should not be "law enforcement" but the
welfare of the community and the amelioration of social conditions which foster
crime. He recognises that unless the emphasis is on prevention and unless the
police have the confidence and support of the people they are supposed to be
protecting, there is no hope of effectively "fighting crime".
But the new breed of hard-line police chiefs, like Anderton
(Manchester), McNee (Metropolitan), and Oxford (Merseyside), regard Alderson's
views as quaintly old-fashioned. They consider that they are coming to grips,
no bones about it, with the realities of a society which cannot afford to put
the emphasis on social welfare. Unlike Alder- .son, they are not primarily
concerned with fighting crime of the traditional sort. They are now preoccupied
with the task of defending the status quo in an industrialised, capitalist
society increasingly torn by economic crisis and class conflict. To base
policing on support and co-operation from the public would, under these
conditions, be unrealistic. Any form of democratic accountability is seen by
these hard-liners as a potentially dangerous restraint on their ability to use
brute force as and when they consider it necessary. They work on the assumption
that the police is a force to be used to uphold a framework of authority, which
they define as "law and order". From this perspective, "community policing" is
seen as little more than a public relations exercise.
The statements of Anderton and the others make it clear what
they really mean by upholding "law and order": not the protection of ordinary
people from violent assaults, burglaries etc, but the defence of big business,
property and the capitalist state from the growing threat of an increasingly
radicalised and militant working class. Speaking on Question Time (BBC-1, 16
October 1979), Anderton said: "I think that from the police point of view that
my task in the futurethat basic crime as suchtheft, burglary, even
violent crimewill not be the predominant police feature. What will be the
matter of greatest concern to me will be the covert and ultimately overt
attempt to overthrow democracy, to subvert the authority of the state, and, in
fact, to involve themselves in acts of sedition designed to destroy our
parliamentary system and the democratic government in this country."
Fighting crime, for chief constables like Anderton, is not the
same thing as catching criminals at all. Listening to this and other of
Anderton's statements, what doubt can there be that by "democracy" he really
means the capitalist system? In practice, "sedition" and "subversion" mean any
attempt by workers to use their democratic and trade union rights to defend
their interests. For example, the Association of Chief Police Officers
complained to the parliamentary Home Affairs Committee (February 1980): "Today
the right to demonstrate is widely exploited, and marching is the most chosen
form of demonstration adopted by protestors. Irrespective of the peaceful
nature of the procession the numbers involved bring town centres to a halt,
business is disrupted and the public bus service thrown out of schedule. In
short, a general annoyance is created to the normal process of daily life."
How readily have police chiefs resorted to blanket bans on
marches under the 1936 Public Order Act, in reality to prevent anti-fascist
demonstrations and counter-demonstrations. On a number of occasions, however,
Anderton and McNee were prepared to muster an enormous number of police to
escort a handful of fascists through the streets, supposedly to defend their
democratic right to demonstrate! Police chiefs are also seeking through
parliamentary Bills to extend their control of marches, requiring advance
notice and seeking to impose their own "code of practice" for demonstrators
which would virtually have the force of law.
The police chiefs have been cautious in supporting legislation
which would inevitably mean head-on collision with mass trade union forces.
They learned some lessons from Saltley Gates and Edward Heath's ill-fated
Industrial Relations Act. However, the police have steadily stepped up their
harassment of labour movement activists. In a "field manual" produced by a
senior London officer in 1977, new recruits were advised to watch out for
people who "although not dishonest in the ordinary sense, may, owing to extreme
political views intend to harm the community you have sworn to protect." It
goes on: "while there are subtle differences between these types of extremists
and thieves, it is difficult to put one's finger on material distinctions."
This is the attitude which increasingly underlies routine
policing. Clearly, the simple catching of criminals is much less important to
the police chiefs, despite the Tones' law and order demagogy, than protecting
the system against anyone who has the temerity to defend their interests or
propagate their views. The labour movement does not condone crimes of violence
(but it equally condemns the appalling cult of violence fostered by business
interests through films, television and other media). Nor can the movement,
while understanding the social causes of crime, support robbery as an
"individual way out" of the problems facing workers. We have no sympathy with
vicious criminal elements who are as much a menace to the workers as to big
property owners, and whose activity provides the state with the excuse for
strengthening repressive powers.
But the need to counter criminal activity does not give the
"guardians of the law" the right to act as though they are a law unto
themselves. Fighting crime does not justify the harassment and ill-treatment of
suspects; or excuse denying suspects adequate legal defence or the twisting or
fabrication of evidence. Fighting crime does not justify savage sentences or
brutal, inhuman conditions in prisons; and it does not justify racial bias or
arbitrary and oppressive policing. Overcoming crime for socialists, means
fundamentally the eradication of the social conditions which produce crime. But
within the present society, democratic accountability of the police, far from
undermining the "fight against crime" would remove the obstacles created by an
undemocratic, unaccountable and increasingly repressive police force.
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