A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE was held yesterday to mark a year since the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by the police in Tottenham.
The refusal of the police to meet the family, at the end of a 120 strong protest march to the local police station to discuss what had happened, was the straw that broke the camel’s back and set off the Tottenham riots, that spread throughout London and then swept through the UK, with tens of thousands of youth taking to the streets.
While the police did not even attempt to control the struggle that erupted, they did film it, and one year later young people are still being arrested and given long-term jail sentences, while not a thing has been done about police killers.
In fact, the state has been very busy. It has put out a report that future youth uprisings should be met with gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and, when deemed necessary, live rounds from police gunmen.
We repeat, one year after the Duggan killing not one police officer has been given so much as a caution, and the police have been given the go-ahead to kill again.
Pam Duggan has just made a fresh plea for justice for the family.
She said: ‘The past 12 months have been terrible. We still have no answers about why my son died. 31 police officers surrounded Mark and he was shot twice.
‘Why? Why have none of the police officers given statements, one year on? One of the last things my partner, Mark’s dad, said before he died a few weeks ago was that he wanted justice for his son. We still don’t have justice. I won’t give up until I get justice for Mark.
‘People need to be held to account for my son’s death. There needs to be a full inquest, in front of a jury of ordinary men and women, to find out the truth.’
She added: ‘I don’t say killed, I say assassinated, because he was.’
She asked: ‘Why was he surrounded by 31 officers? Why was he shot twice? Why was the cab moved from the scene, taken away and brought back? They can’t answer me.’
Last summer the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) categorically denied that the death was an ‘assassination’.
It is compiling a report that will be passed to a coroner in the autumn, and is believed to urge that some evidence about police operations must be heard in secret.
Initially the police tried to state that there had been a gunbattle and that a policeman had been hit. However it was proven that a bullet that lodged in a policeman’s radio was police issue.
At a pre-inquest hearing at North London Coroner’s Court last year, IPCC investigator Colin Sparrow was forced to admit that none of Duggan’s DNA, blood or fingerprints had been found on a non-police issue gun recovered from the scene in Tottenham, north London.
The hearing was told that a gun that was being linked to Duggan was actually found 14ft from the crime scene in Ferry Lane, on the other side of a fence.
Michael Mansfield QC said witnesses had claimed to see a police officer throw the weapon there. He asked Sparrow: ‘How on earth did the gun get over a fence 14ft away? Was it thrown there by a police officer?’ Sparrow answered: ‘That’s a suggestion, yes.’
After the farcical G20 verdict over the killing of Ian Tomlinson, and after the refusal to prosecute police officers who shot dead Harry Stanley in Hackney, the message is loud and clear.
The state is never going to make an example out of its police gunmen, since they have already planned to use them against the working class in the near future.
The only way to deal with the crimes of the capitalist state is to overthrow it and smash it with a socialist revolution.
