THE Metropolitan Police chief Blair was yesterday forgiven by the Attorney General for secretly tapping at least one of their conversations ‘for future reference’.
It has also emerged that Ian Blair taped a number of his conversations with officials of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, with whom he has been in conflict over just what exactly the armed police and their controllers did in the period leading up to and during the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Blair insisted that he had ‘full confidence’ in his police chief.
The matter is now likely to be the subject of a huge cover-up attempt, since the likelihood is that all calls made by the Metropolitan Police chief to the men and women who are alleged to be his political masters are routinely taped, and that the police take an interest in a lot of their other activities as well.
In fact, the relationship of the Labour government and PM Blair to Sir Ian Blair has been one of master and servant.
Traditionally, the police are supposed to be the servants of bourgeois democracy through their subordination to their elected political masters, the government.
However, this position has been openly reversed by Tony Blair. He has justified all of the reactionary legislation that his government has brought in, or tried to bring in, by declaring that it has been especially requested by the Met police, who after all know about such matters and definitely know best, he says.
Take the matter of the number of days that the police are able to hold a suspect in custody before charging, or releasing him or her. The current number of days is seven. Sir Ian Blair wanted the length of time increased almost 13 fold to 90 days, and the government has battled for this in vote after vote in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons.
Forced to settle for less, they have warned that the failure by the Houses of Parliament to do just what Police Chief Blair wants will be the cause of future disasters which the Houses of Parliament, not the police, will have to take responsibility for.
Then there is the whole question of the ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy that both Blair’s support despite the murder of an innocent man at Stockwell tube by a police death squad on July 22, 2005.
The police chiefs decided on this policy and carried it out regardless of the fact that the House of Commons has never discussed it and voted on it. Last week, the ACPO top cops body met, and decided that the police were completely correct, and that ‘shoot-to-kill’ would continue to be the policy used by their forces, regardless of the innocents that will be killed in the process.
They definitely did not suggest that the Houses of Parliament should decide on this issue. They were definitely not rebuked by Prime Minister Blair and Attorney General Goldsmith for their arrogant presumption. These alleged political masters of the police were only too happy to let the police decide on the matter.
In fact, a feature of their legislation has been the power that is given to an individual police officer, to either cordon off an area and declare a state of emergency, or shut down a web site, arguing that any move to have a judge decide on the matter would be just a waste of time.
All this goes under the name of summary justice, where the police decide that a crime has been committed, find the individual suspect guilty and then punish him or her. It is PM Blair who has created the political policemen, who know better than parliament, and have summary powers to kill and punish.
He cannot blame them if they begin to think that they could make a much better job of running the country than their elected masters. Ian Blair has begun to spy on his masters and keep their political observations for future reference. In the critical days to come, as the government battles to put an end to the Welfare State, such political policemen may decide that the government has failed and that they should be running the country.
It is on this basis that police and military coups take place.
Prime Minister Blair has brought the political policemen onto the scene but it is the working class who will pay the price. The only way to deal with this problem is through the organisation of a socialist revolution to smash the capitalist state, including the police, to go forward to a workers’ state and a workers’ government.
