AT the moment it looks as if a fierce battle is being fought between the Labour government and the opposition parties over the fate of the Metropolitan police chief, Blair.
It seems that Premier Brown and Home Secretary Smith support this arrogant and supremely thick-skinned police chief whatever the consequences, and insist that he should not have to resign or bear any responsibility even for the murder of an innocent man by a police death squad, that was ultimately under his command.
However it is something of a false battle. With the publication of an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report into the Stockwell killing expected soon, and then an inquest into it, it is only a matter of time before Blair is sacked, resigns or is driven out of office.
What Brown and Smith are seeking to achieve is to hang onto Blair for as long as possible, preferably till the end of the inquest, so that his is the only head that rolls, so that the police death squads organised under the Operation Kratos classification, are not broken up but remain intact under their gold and silver commanders for future use.
In fact, if these death squads and the capitalist state remain intact, De Menezes will only be among the first of its shoot to kill victims.
Before our eyes the capitalist system is disintegrating with its banks going bust.
The entire cost of this crisis is going to be placed onto the shoulders of the working class and the middle class who are going to lose their jobs and their homes so that the banks survive.
Under these conditions, stormy revolutionary movements of the masses are inevitable. The ruling class will need more shoot to kill squads, not less, to deal with this revolutionary movement of the working class.
This is why Brown and Smith are so desperate to defend and sustain Blair for as long as possible.
If he were to go now, the appetite of the masses would only be whetted to see the gold commanders and the triggermen themselves in the dock on murder charges.
If the ruling class was seriously worried about terrorism, there is a simple solution available.
It is to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan and treat the Arab states as equals not as inferiors, and develop relations with them that take into account the needs of the Arab and Islamic peoples.
This would pull the rug from beneath ‘Islamic terrorism’, which has been provoked by the outrages committed by the imperialist powers.
However, there is no way that the Brown government or any British capitalist government would adopt this policy.
Brown consider that the survival of British capitalism requires that it seize the oil and gas of the Gulf and the Middle East and that outbursts of ‘terrorism’ are a price worth paying to achieve this aim.
At home, they know full well that their policy of destroying the Welfare State and turning Britain into a cheap labour state will provoke a stormy and revolutionary response from the working class in the period ahead.
This is why they are determined to have more and more dictatorial laws and more shoot to kill police squads.
The News Line supports the demand that Blair be sacked and that the police shoot to kill squads are disbanded, and that their triggermen and golden and silver commanders stand trial for murder.
We warn workers that just getting rid of Blair will not democratise the state or get rid of the death squads.
What is required in Britain is a socialist revolution which smashes and destroys the capitalist state, breaks up the death squads, and continues to expropriate the bosses and bankers to bring in socialism.
