Don’t amend, kill it dead
If we really want to #killthebill, we must equip this movement with an understanding of the true nature of policing in this country
I’m exasperated, and I daresay all of us who understand how the state functions will find this a familiar feeling over the next few months. I’ve just experienced someone arguing that the new crime and policing bill should be "amended" because it has "good parts to it". What parts, i’m not sure, seeing as this rather unfortunate specimen was told he was at the wrong protest and left without telling us. Another man argued that we should applaud the police for being "respectful". Of course, I pointed out that applauding someone for doing what they’re paid to do is rather redundant, that in a few months people protesting against climate change, racial injustice (which apparently is non-existent in the UK) , hunting or fascism will be seen as a nuisance. That the “respect” we shown today is contingent on us drafting this bill.
However, I do not think all is lost. The coalition that is forming in response to the new bill is extremely broad. There are many middle class people that object to (at least portions of) this bill. This is why we have to be able to have a conversation, not only about what this bill means, but the history of policing itself in this country. How this bill is in some ways, just an extension of what has been going on for decades. People need to understand spy cops, they need to understand how the police treat travelers, People of Colour in the inner city, and how police were not brought into to fight crime, their origins lie in crowd control.
The origins of the police lie not in an attempt to curtail crime, but to deal with crowds. The army was used infamously at the Peterborough Massacre in 1819 to deal with the crowd, resulting in the deaths of 18 people. The first police force was formed in 1814 and its main function was to "deal with any form of rioting". Robert Peel, the founder of the 1819 force, later formed a Civil Police Force in London in 1829.Similar forces were set up shortly after in various parts of the UK. This was in part due to the debacle at Peterloo.
Crowds, many of us will and have been in, were the main reason for the forming of the police in 1829. Not much has changed in that regard since then. The Police have been responsible for a number of, for a lack of a better word, atrocities, at protests. Let us take the case of Blair Peach, who was killed at a protest against the National Front in Southall in 1979. He died of blunt force trauma to the head, and was probably killed by a baton wielded by a member of the Special Patrol Group (the predecessor of the Territorial Support Group, which policies many protests in London).
However, the deaths at protests caused by Police did not stop with Peach. The Police were responsible for the death of Ian Tomlinson at an anti-G20 protest in 2009. Tomlinson was a street vendor who had no part in the protest, but he was whacked with a baton by Simon Yarwood, a TSG officer, and fell to the floor. He walked away from the scene, but later collapsed and was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead. None of the police in the vicinity offered any assistance. Yarwood was later discharged, but he was found not guilty of manslaughter. A year later, a student protestor at a demo in London was attacked with a baton. Bleeding profusely from the head, his life was only saved because he rang his parents who picked him up and rushed him to hospital.
These are just the most well known examples of police being extremely violent on demos in recent memory, yet these things are not held within public consciousness or memory in Britain. They are a niche, and no one has been properly punished for these attacks.
Don't amend the bill, kill it dead
So, what is the way forward? We need to find the language to discuss the violent policing of protests in this country, and we have to be able to make people see that applauding the police will not help us. Thanking the boot for not stamping on our face is not the way forward, let us have some self respect. Applauding the police for something they are paid to do is useless if this time next year we cannot even cause "a nuisance". All of us, from extinction rebellion, to black lives matter, to hunt saboteurs will find protesting nigh on impossible.
The language to help people understand how the police function and what it is for is within us. Many, particularly young people, are coming to a realisation about the true nature of policing in Britain, and the people arguing for clapping and amending today were over 50s. Generation left is a tangible reality, yet we have to equip ourselves and those around with an understanding that this bill is not onl a massive threat, it is not unprecedented.
