IAN TOMLINSON, a 47-year-old news vendor in the City of London, collapsed at 7.25pm on April 1 on his way home from work during ‘anti-capitalist’ protests. It appears that he had been pushed, hit with batons and knocked to the ground by police officers, shortly before he collapsed and died of a heart attack.
Eyewitnesses, photographs and video footage reveal that on one occasion he was manhandled by police and was hit on the legs with a baton, pushed from behind and hit the ground with considerable force.
Within 15 minutes of being pushed over in Cornhill he collapsed further along the road. Police medics called an ambulance, but Tomlinson was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
A statement from the Metropolitan Police, issued at 11.36pm, said a man had collapsed in St Michael’s Alley and an ambulance had been called at 7.30pm. It said: ‘The [police medics] gave him an initial check and cleared his airway before moving him back behind the cordon line to a clear area outside the Royal Exchange Building where they gave him CPR.
‘The officers took the decision to move him as during this time a number of missiles – believed to be bottles – were being thrown at them.’
This statement did not mention the fact that the police had physical contact with Tomlinson before he collapsed. Eyewitnesses did not see the police being pelted with bottles.
The IPCC probe initially took the form of an investigation by the City of London Police, managed by the IPCC. After video footage revealed that City of London Police officers were present when Tomlinson was apparently pushed to the ground, the IPCC was forced to announce on Wednesday that its personnel will undertake the investigation.
The involvement of the police in the death of Ian Tomlinson has thrown a spotlight on the nature of the police operation in the City of London on April 1.
It was preceded by virulently anti-working-class sections of the bourgeois media waging a campaign for a huge para-military police operation against protesters.
Shami Chakrabarti, from the civil liberties group, Liberty, noted: ‘Clear images of an armoured policeman assaulting an innocent bystander from behind impugn the whole attitude to policing of protests by the Metropolitan Police.’
Tomlinson was the victim of a huge orchestrated police operation aimed, not merely at restricting protesters to certain public highways, but intimidating them.
This intimidation was implemented through the tactic of ‘kettling’; wearing full riot gear, including batons, shields and body armour; hiding officers’ faces by wearing balaclava masks; and the deployment of riot police on horseback.
Chakrabarti added: ‘The IPCC failed its first major test in the Menezes case. If the commission is to regain a shred of public confidence it must do far better in terms of speed, sanction and transparency.’
This draws attention to the fact that there are marked parallels with the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by Metropolitan Police officers in July 2005.
At that time, the IPCC went along with the police’s accounts. This time the IPCC was reluctant to mount its own investigation, leaving it to one of the forces involved in the operation in the City.
The propaganda offensive waged by the Metropolitan Police chiefs and their allies in the media before April 1 was an orchestrated campaign to give the police a free hand in containing and intimidating protesters.
These political police chiefs clearly have their own agenda in dealing with ‘anti-capitalist’ demonstrations and rallies. They are for the defence of the bourgeois order, its bankrupt bankers and businessmen.
It is clear that they will trample on democratic rights, like the right to organise, the right to demonstrate and the right of assembly.
This must serve as a warning to the working class, youth and students, and workers’ organisations, its trade unions and political parties.
They must organise their own self-defence, protection against the increasingly militarised police state forces, during pickets, marches and rallies.
The defence of democratic rights is inseparable from the struggle to get rid of Brown’s bankers’ government, establish a workers’ government, overthrow bankrupt capitalism and disband the capitalist state forces.