ON Monday, Ernest Moret, who works at the Paris based publisher Editions La Fabrique, was stopped by Metropolitan Police officers after travelling to London on Eurostar.
Moret was on his way to attend the London Book Fair when he was stopped and detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which gives the police wide powers to stop and search people at border crossings to check if they are involved in terrorist activities.
When Moret refused to hand over the passcodes to his mobile phone and computer, he was immediately arrested and carted off to Islington police station to be interrogated.
It was under questioning at the station, that the real interest of the police in Moret became clear. Nothing to do with terrorism, but only concerned with the massive demonstrations against French president Emmanuel Macron by workers and youth.
In a joint statement, Editions La Fabrique and the UK publisher Verso said:
‘The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities in this matter.’
Moret’s lawyer, Richard Parry, present during one of the interrogations that took place, said that Moret was asked by police if he supported Macron and whether he had attended demonstrations in France against Macron.
Parry also reported that Moret was ‘invited’ to name anti-government authors in the catalogue of La Fabrique.
Moret refused to answer all these questions and was subsequently bailed on Tuesday night, minus his phone and computer, which remain in the hands of the police – doubtless so their tech experts can get to work on them to unlock any information that will be passed to the French security services.
Parry voiced concerns that the French security services had asked the UK security service to use counter-terror powers to seize electronic devices – powers that they are denied under French law.
Parry was also alarmed that Moret was asked to supply information about his contacts that would also be handed over.
Parry said: ‘What legitimate interests is it for British police to ask about his attendance at demonstrations in France?’ a question many will be asking.
People will also be contrasting the treatment handed out to a man with no criminal conviction for anything, let alone any association with a ‘terrorist organisation, with the ease with which known terrorist Salam Abedi was allowed to pass unhindered through border checks before carrying out the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 that killed 22 young people.
The official inquiry revealed that Abedi had been flagged up three times by MI5 as posing a terrorist threat but still he and his fellow terrorists were given free access to and from the UK to Libya where Islamic terrorists were the allies of the imperialist war to overthrow the government led by Colonel Gadaffi.
For the capitalist ruling class, these Jihadist terrorists are not the enemy – the real enemy is the working class that is rising up in revolutionary insurrection against a bankrupt capitalist system determined to make workers and youth pay for its crisis.
In France, workers and young people are on the point of insurrection as they see only a general strike will remove Macron – a general strike that will immediately pose the question of the working class taking power.
This will spark similar uprisings across Europe and the world. It is this fear that is uniting the ruling class in France and Britain as they unite in a war to smash the fast-developing revolutionary movement.
The working class must also unite against the common enemy. Karl Marx wrote: ‘Workers of all countries unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, you have the world to win’ – not a slogan but a historical necessity.
The urgent issue is to build parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to give the necessary leadership to take the working class forward and break the chains of capitalism with the victory of the world socialist
revolution.