THE Metropolitan Police is considering its tactics after the failure of its containment and ‘kettling’ policies in Parliament square last Thursday, when masses of angry workers and youth refused to be intimidated by charging horses and truncheon swinging riot policemen.
What the authorities found to be most shocking was that very middle class people, whose parents could well have voted Tory at the last general election, were heavily involved in the movement to smash the plan to impose £9,000 tuition fees, and close down large numbers of universities.
It has now dawned on the coalition that their determination to save crisis ridden capitalism, and its bankers and bosses who caused the crisis, by sacrificing the interests of the working class and the middle class, means that they will be fighting the majority of the nation, whose determination to stop them and defeat them, is increasing by the hour, especially after the youth have shown their determination to resist.
The question has therefore become a question of force, and forces.
It amounts to which class is the more powerful, the more ruthless, and the more determined to secure its objectives.
The ruling class is by definition the more ruthless and the more determined. Its history of countless atrocities to maintain its rule proves that point.
But it is no longer the most powerful class in society.
It is now a servant of US imperialism, desperate to stay in its good books. It is after all the ruling class that is prepared to have aircraft carriers for at least 10 years without aircraft.
The working class is the most powerful class in society. It is however held in a restraint hold by the trade union bureaucracy that serves capitalism. It needs its own revolutionary, Bolshevik leadership, the only leadership that has been able to organise the overthrowal of capitalism. With this leadership it will be able to lead the majority of the middle class forward with the necessary vision, ruthlessness and determination to overthrow the bankrupt capitalist order and bring in socialism.
This great struggle is now underway, driven on by the deepening world crisis of the capitalist system.
Yesterday the Home Secretary Theresa May told Sky TV: ‘the Met Police obviously have to look at how they should be dealing with these demonstrations . . . They will look across the board and they will be making operational decisions.’
She added: ‘What is absolutely crucial is that for those who did inflict criminal damage, for those who were breaking the law, that they should now feel the full force of the law on them.’
Asked whether the police should be allowed to use water cannons on protesters at future events, May said the decision would be up to officers.
She gave the game away by saying: ‘You wouldn’t expect me to sit here and give the game away about what tactics would be used.’
Danny Alexander, the LibDem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has also insisted that: ‘This coalition is rock solid. There is a real sense of purpose about this coalition, it is going to last over the five years because we have a very strong and radical programme of policies to deliver.’
May tells the judiciary to impose heavy sentences and virtually admits that it is to be dispersal not containment with water cannon and rubber bullets the main weapons of choice, while the LibDem Alexander assures her that his party is involved in the business right up to the hilt.
The response of the workers and the youth must be to build up the revolutionary leadership of the WRP in the struggle for an indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition and carry through a socialist revolution.
In the course of this struggle it goes without saying that the working class will have to be organised to defend its meetings and demonstrations against attacks by the forces of the capitalist state.
This is the only way that the struggle for power can be resolved in the interests of the working class and the majority of the middle class.
