FRESH from the Labour Party conference on Thursday, the Prime Minister Kier Starmer was forced to condemn the ‘shocking’ racism and misogyny in the Metropolitan Police force when confronted with the evidence in a secretly-filmed BBC Panorama documentary broadcast on Wednesday in which officers called for immigrants to be shot.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan also said he was left feeling disgusted and angry by the racist, anti-Muslim, and misogynistic behaviour shown by Met Police.
The evidence uncovered by Panorama suggested that racist, misogynistic, and an anti-Muslim culture still existed within the Met, along with an excessive use of force.
An investigation into racism and corruption in the Met Police, by the 1999 Macpherson Enquiry, following the murder of south London teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993, found the Met Police to be ‘institutionally racist’ and ‘corrupt’.
In 2005 the Met police murdered a young Brazilian electrician on his way to work by executing him in a crowded tube train at Stockwell station with over a dozen gunshots to the head while he was on the floor of the carriage.
Nobody was prosecuted for this murder and the officer-in-charge, Cressida Dick, was promoted to commissioner.
These murderous killings against civilians have continued ever since, with only very rare prosecutions against the police perpetrators.
Starmer’s calls for a ‘robust’ response from Mark Rowley, the Met Police commissioner, to the findings of the Panorama documentary were also condemned by Rowley who told LBC radio that, ‘the officers’ behaviour was “ghastly” and ‘reprehensible’.
‘Clearly there’s racism in there, there’s misogyny, there’s clearly relishing in using excess force. It’s completely unacceptable.’
However, despite claiming that the Met is ‘relentlessly rooting out these characters’ he refused to commit to take any action, saying: ‘Frankly some of the content from last night on its own, in my mind, would be enough to bring officers to fast-track misconduct hearings.’
As for Cressida Dick, she was forced out of her role as Met Police commissioner in 2022 by Sadiq Khan over issues at Charing Cross Police Station.
A police watchdog report at the time revealed officers at the station had shared social media messages in which they had joked about rape and killing black children.
But now in 2025, police forces are being handed almost unlimited power by the Labour government to maintain capitalist social order in the UK, as it collapses and falls into recession.
Police state repression and the scrapping of democratic rights are on Starmer’s agenda.
Immediately after the Manchester attack yesterday on a group of Jewish worshippers, where two people were killed outside a synagogue, Home Secretary Shaana Mahmood called for the mass demonstrations against Israeli genocide in Gaza be banned.
She attacked a pro-Palestine protest against the Israeli attack on the flotilla aid ships heading to Gaza, as ‘un-British’.
Clearly the police forces are being prepared for a major confrontation with the working class and its democratic rights and living standards, with ever more oppressive state attacks.
Starmer’s war on refugees and asylum seekers is pandering to patriotism and anti-immigration moods to try to split workers during the catastrophic economic crisis in Britain, where he is now attempting to force identity cards onto the whole population.
Calls are now rising for all police officers to be armed, while facial-recognition cameras are rapidly being installed across the country to monitor protesters, strikers and youth.
Perhaps the most threatening of all is the government ban on the Palestine Action protest, proscribing this protest movement as ‘terrorist’, membership of which, along with their supporters, is punishable with arrest and even imprisonment.
Such unfounded designations, without any evidence produced, of any group, individual or organisation now threatens protest groups, left-wing political parties and even the trade unions themselves.
All these drastic and emergency measures are to create a police state in Britain, ahead of a brutal orgy of spending cuts, especially to the NHS and social benefits, and tax increases in October’s budget, to cut the state debt and stave off complete bankruptcy, by a run on the pound and skyrocketing inflation and mass unemployment.
Now is the time to act to defeat these police state moves. The working class and the trade unions must take general strike action to bring down this corrupt right-wing Labour government with an indefinite general strike and set up a workers’ government and socialism to nationalise the banks, industries and utilities, bringing in a planned socialist economy.
Only this will bring an end to these divisive and reactionary policies of both Labour and Tory and allow all workers to live in peace in the period ahead.
