ON Sunday, Police Commissioner Blair told the world that the policy of shooting to kill ‘terrorist suspects’ was national policy, not just a Metropolitan Police policy, and that the policy had been ‘reviewed and reviewed’ and that ‘we are quite comfortable that the policy is right.’
Blair continued to admit that ‘Somebody else could get shot’, but added that ‘the only way to deal with this is to shoot to the head.’
After he spoke, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke supported the police chief’s position and said that the policy would not be changed.
This secret policy, repeatedly reviewed, and adopted by all of the country’s police forces, and supported by the government, has never been discussed, never mind ‘reviewed and reviewed’ by the House of Commons, nor by the cabinet, despite the fact that the likelihood always was that innocent citizens would be shot to death by police death squads.
This policy was the result of a cold blooded and coolly calculated decision to put the lives of ordinary citizens in danger, at the hands of police death squads, in order to maintain government policy in the Midde East.
Because of the determination of the police chiefs and the government to continue with this policy of state executions of suspects, the likelihood is that Jean Charles de Menezes will not be the last completely innocent person to be shot to death by a police death squad.
This decision to continue with the policy amounts to encouragement to murder.
Nevertheless, Police Chief Blair remains comfortable with the policy, as does Home Secretary Clarke, Foreign Secretary Straw and Prime Minister Blair.
It is obvious that there will be no state prosecutions of the police gang that carried out the killing of the young Brazilian. They are to have immunity from prosecution.
Neither will the architects of this policy in the state and the government face trial, despite the fact that on Sunday, Police Commissioner Blair took the responsibility for the killing of the young Brazilian, while the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary must take the political responsibility for allowing the police to assassinate an ordinary citizen.
That a policy of five shots to the head is ferocious is obvious. It is the kind of policy that is used to put down insurrections and to put fear into the hearts of opponents of dictatorships.
Why does the Blair government and the state need such a draconian policy, which has built into it the prospect of numbers of innocent victims.
They need it because they intend to carry on with the policy of seeking to steal the oil and gas reserves of Iraq and central Asia through cruel war and murderous occupation, and recognise that there will be a growing reaction to this policy.
But this war is on two fronts. They are also showing the British workers just how ruthless the capitalist state is, when it is fighting for its life.
They are warning workers, as their standard of living drops rapidly because of the crisis of capitalism, just what kind of treatment they will get if they rise up against the established capitalist order.
Meanwhile, they are using the terrorist attacks, that they have provoked, to take away the democratic rights of the working class, all the better to be able to force cheap labour and privatisation onto it.
There is only one way to deal with this imperialist, capitalist government and its terror policies in Iraq and at home.
Workers must force the trade unions, whose leaders have been amazingly quiet about police death squads roaming the tube network, into action.
The trade unions must demand the disbanding of the police armed units and the withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
To achieve this they must call a general strike to bring down the Blair government and to bring in a workers’ government, that will withdraw the troops and disband the police death squads.
The only way to rid the world of terrorism, is to get rid of capitalism and imperialism, through socialist revolutions, that will smash the capitalist state forces and establish fraternal relations with the Arab and Asian peoples.
This is what a workers’ government will do.