PRIME Minister Tony Blair launched the Labour government’s new ‘Respect Action Plan’ yesterday, declaring that he was setting out to overthrow basic democratic rights that have existed for hundreds of years.
He said: ‘The real choice, the choice on the street, is not between a criminal law process that protects the accused and one that doesn’t. It is between a criminal law process that puts protection of the accused in all circumstances above and before that of protecting the public.
‘A few years ago, we began to change this. . . ASBOs came into being where general behaviour, not specific individual offences, was criminalised. This has, bluntly, reversed the burden of proof.’
Under long-established English law, a person is presumed innocent of an offence, until proven otherwise. Blair is demanding the opposite, that an individual is guilty and punished, and they have to prove their innocence. He said: ‘If they want to challenge (a police fine) they have to appeal.’
Blair declared: ‘To get on top of 21st century crime, we need to accept that what works in practice is a measure of summary power with the right to appeal, alongside the traditional court process.’
The ‘Summary Power’ proposed in the ‘Action Plan’ means that anyone is declared to be guilty, is punished and has no right to challenge this in a court of law before the sentence is carried out.
Under these police-state measures, the police will give out Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) for ‘unacceptable behaviour’, increasing them from £80 to £100. Conditional cautions from the police can mean that so-called ‘offenders’ will be dragooned into forced labour.
‘Problem families’ will be subjected to a ‘closure order’, evicting them from their homes. Councils and private landlords, like housing associations, will also be given powers to evict tenants using Anti-Social Behaviour Injunctions (ASBIs). It is proposed that ASBOs will be used more widely with housing ALMOs, TMOs and PFI schemes given powers to issue ASBOs.
Behind the Orwellian ‘newspeak’ about ‘Respect’, Blair is proposing that the police will have the right to impose fines and confiscate property on the spot, without the necessary proof demanded in a court of law. Already, since January 1, the police can arrest anyone for anything, merely on ‘suspicion’.
This is not about ‘anti-social behaviour’. When we look at the proposals concerning the way this ‘action plan’ will work and the penalties, it is clear that this is police-state class law directed against the working class and particularly youth.
Yet it is the Labour government which is carrying out the most gross acts of anti-social behaviour.
It is depriving hundreds of thousands of young people of the right to free university education by pricing them out of it through the imposition of tuition fees. The government has forced local councils to privatise their leisure centres and sports facilities and the privateers are imposing high charges to ensure huge profits, barring youth with limited incomes from these facilities.
The ‘Respect Action Plan’ proposes to target the working class and youth for even more attacks. It is not directed at Blair’s business friends.
The bankers, who are making a fortune out of student debts, are not going to lose the proceeds of their ill-gotten gains by having their Rolls Royces towed away. The bosses of the hospital cleaning companies are not going to be served with ASBOs when someone dies in a dirty hospital.
Carrying out policies which deprive youth of the right to free education, leisure facilities and proper jobs, the Blair regime’s response to the resulting resistance of workers and rebellious youth is a new raft of police-state measures.
Blair is throwing down a challenge to the whole working class. It is time that the trade union movement, with its millions of members, responded to defend working-class youth, democratic rights, education, the NHS and council housing.
Workers must demand their trade union leaders organise industrially and politically to bring down the Blair regime, by organising a general strike to defend past gains and fight for a future for youth.
The Labour government must be replaced with a workers’ government that will scrap all Blair’s police-state measures, end the privatisation of public services and provide a future for young people.
All those leaders who refuse to organise the struggle to get rid of this Labour government are aiding these attacks. They must be removed and replaced with leaders who will organise this fight.
