THE capitalist state establishment was yesterday rushing into the breach to prop up the ailing head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, Britain’s leading political policeman.
Just a few months ago he was leading the law and order campaign for the Prime Minister, campaigning for a parliamentary bill that would allow the police to hold suspects without charge for periods of up to 90 days.
The need to prop Ian Blair up, arrived after a leak from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) inquiry report into the murder, by shoot-to-kill police, of Jean Charles de Menezes.
This leak revealed that Ian Blair’s blocking of an independent inquiry gave an opportunity to police officers to tamper with the evidence.
According to the leaked report, the IPCC has concluded that mistakes were made on every level, from the top down, which led to the ‘wrong man’ being targeted; that the command and control of the shoot-to-kill operation was ‘flawed’; that there was a lack of resources in the police force for surveillance operations; and that the shoot-to-kill policy was not clear enough.
There is also the issue of the 250 strong police raid by the Metropolitan Police on a home in Forest Gate where one person was shot, a number of people bludgeoned, and two people held in a cell for a week, with absolutely nothing to show for the raid, not even a police and government apology.
The police had attempted to spin their way out of this, saying that one of the arrested men had shot the other one, and then that the police had objected to MI5 on the skimpiness of any evidence to mount such a raid. MI5 spun back there was complete unanimity over the need for the raid.
This splintering in the ranks of the state was enough to split the Metropolitan Police Authority with one of its members, Damian Hockney, demanding that Sir Ian Blair resign.
Into the breach stepped the Prime Minister, at his press conference, with the Israeli leader Olmert.
He said that he supported the police acting with ‘complete inhibition’ when presented with information on terrorism that they considered demanded action.
He added: ‘I want them to act without any inhibition at all.’ He continued referring specifically to the Forest Gate raid: ‘If our police did not act on such information, then we would have the right to complain.’
Since they did act on the information ‘we have not got the right to complain’, including those unlucky enough to have been shot and bludgeoned. It is a question of shut up or perhaps face summary justice.
Blair’s position is that since these types of state forces are vital for defending today’s capitalism, a few innocent people getting killed, or not such a few, depending on the situation, must not be allowed to hold them up or get in their way.
It is clear that the political sponsor of ‘shoot-to-kill’ policing, and of police forces acting without being inhibited by innocent until proven guilty, is the Prime Minister.
He is the political sponsor of the 78 strong police raid that destroyed the picket line of Brian Haw at 3.00am outside the House of Commons.
He is the political sponsor of the shoot-to-kill police at Stockwell, and the political sponsor of the 300 strong Forest Gate police raid.
And if innocent people are shot, well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
And of course you will never be able to smash the Welfare State without such bodies of armed men taking action against the working class.
What this means for the working class is that it must use its great strength in the trade unions to bring down the Blair government in order to go forward to a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and smash their state apparatus, police, standing army, and judiciary into smithereens.
This is the lesson to grasp out of the determination of the bourgeoisie to have state forces standing by ready, willing and able to shoot-to-kill on command.
