THE capitalist press over the weekend was full of ‘revelations’ concerning ‘Operation Temperer’ a plan drawn up by police chiefs to put Britain under Martial Law, with 5,000 armed troops ready and trained to support the police in massive operations against terrorists, or a terror attack that the state alleges is about to take place, and wants to pre-empt.
In such an operation civil and democratic rights and the rule of law will be the first casualty as the police and the army move into action to kill terrorists or terrorist suspects (people who get in the way – remember Jean Charles de Menezes).
The only law will be ‘Martial Law’, with army officers the judge and jury. The plans of the UK’s police chiefs go hand in hand with the rapid evolution of Cameron as a would-be ‘war leader’ in the service of President Obama.
Cameron has announced to his media friends that he is ready to strike Libya after the murder of British tourists in Tunisia by IS forces allegedly trained in Libya. The immediate problem with Cameron’s new adventure is that there are any number of ‘governments’ in Libya, and any intervention by the UK in the air or on the ground would not be at the invitation of the Libyan people.
This imperialist invasion would be a continuation of the disastrous 2011 intervention when, with Cameron in the van, NATO organised the Libyan Islamists to overthrow and murder Colonel Gadaffi, destroying what was a prosperous and advanced country and handing it over to Al Qaeda and then IS armed gangs.
That failed intervention and the following failed intervention in Syria is responsible for the mass movement of hundreds of thousands of would-be migrants across the Mediterranian. These migrants have been drowned in their thousands. This disaster is the responsibility of the Cameron and other NATO governments. They are responsible for the mass drownings that would have been impossible under Colonel Gadaffi.
Destroying Libya and then Syria is not enough for Cameron. He now wants to continue with the imperialist wars against the Arab peoples. The rise of the IS and other terrorist groups, and the willingness of many young British people to act as their suicide bombers, is the responsibility of Cameron and other imperialist leaders – it is their wars that have done it!
A new UK attack on Libya and Syria will provoke terrorist actions in London and the UK, as Cameron and the police chiefs well know. They, however, intend to proceed. In fact, this attempt to enslave the Arab peoples is leading directly to the emergence of a military police dictatorship at home. Already MPs have been told that the Wilson Doctrine, under which their privacy as far as communications is concerned, has been scrapped as out of date.
Already the British people are the most spied on in the world, with Cameron classifying anti-imperialist opinions as being responsible for terrorism and therefore, in themselves, criminal. The scene is being set for Martial Law in the streets where democratic rights are seen as an aid to terrorism, and therefore have to be suspended indefinitely.
However, the war will not be directed just against ‘bomb throwing terrorists’ and those whose ideas are held to be supports for terrorism. The Tory government is determined to bring in new anti-union laws to make strikes illegal. This will see strikers being criminalised and their strikes being termed as terrorist actions, doing more damage to the country than bomb-throwers.
The truth is that the bodies of armed men and the anti-terror forces, will be used against the working class and the trade unions at home, and also against the youth. The Police Chiefs are sure that ahead are major youth rebellions against the massive daily attacks on youth – that will have to be dealt with.
The truth is that the enemy of the working class and the youth is the British ruling class, the same enemy that the Arab peoples face. Putting an end to terrorism will require overthrowing the British ruling class with a socialist revolution to end the terror that British imperialism has imposed on the world for more than a century.
