THE Metropolitan police are seeking a court order to force Guardian journalists to reveal their sources for the information that Milly Dowler’s phone was being hacked by the News of the World.
It was this information that led to the current situation where leading police officers, including a Met Police Commissioner, have been forced to resign, after the police’s refusal to take any further action against Murdoch.
Thanks to the leak, the public now know that at least ten ex-News of the World reporters work in the Met police’s press department, and that a leading police officer, part of the alleged investigation into phone hacking, and the decision not to continue with it, on retirement worked for the Murdoch empire.
It is also common knowledge that ex-News of the World editor Coulson was appointed 10 Downing Street press officer with a recommendation from Chancellor Osborne easing his way into the job, and that for month after month Cameron refused to sack him, as the details of the hacking scandal emerged.
When Coulson was forced to resign as the Number 10 press chief, the extremely close relationship between News International and the Cameron government was also revealed to the whole world, including the scores of meetings and lunches that took place, where there were discussions concerning government support for Murdoch’s bid to acquire BSkyB.
The revelations that began with the Guardian’s scoop that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked changed British politics forever, since they showed that the MPs’ expenses scandal, was just the beginning of the exposure of the scandal that is the British state, an exposure which has yet to be completed.
The scandal thus far has revealed how News International had a special relationship with the police, had a willing servant in Chancellor Osborne, and an actual servant in PM Cameron.
The Metropolitan police, in seeking a court order under the Official Secrets Act to make Guardian reporters disclose their confidential sources about the phone-hacking scandal, are seeking to undo the damage that has been done, and prevent further revelations.
They want to make an example of those who leaked, so that draconian punishments can follow and deter all those in the future who may be tempted to make even more damaging revelations
This is therefore not just the crudest attempt possible at gaining revenge. It is also an attempt to return to the days before the Milly Dowler scandal arose, so that the very special relationship between the media moghuls, the police and the government, the essence of the modern dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, can be resumed without far of exposure.
The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, said on Friday: ‘We shall resist this extraordinary demand to the utmost’, while Tom Watson, Labour MP, called it, ‘an outrageous abuse’.
In fact, it shows that despite the resignations and the humiliations that were delivered to the police and the government, both remain determined to punish those responsible for their discomfiture, as a warning to the others.
Scotland Yard’s counter-attack brings home the truth of the situation.
This is that it is impossible to reform or beautify the capitalist state and its apparatus of repression, since it is through using the power of this state apparatus that the ruling class maintains its ruling position in society.
There is only one way to deal with the state, and that is to break it up and smash it with a socialist revolution, in order to expropriate the bourgeoisie and bring in a workers’ state and a socialist planned economy.
