LABOUR prime minister Keir Starmer emerged from an emergency COBRA meeting of ministers on Monday to announce the formation of a new ‘standing army’ of specialist police officers in response to the outbreak of violence from gangs of far-right and neo-fascists in towns and cities that have dominated the news this week.
Ministers were quick to explain that this is not actually the regular army they are intending to use on the streets, stressing that this was not needed at present as there are enough police already.
Police forces across the country already send public order officers to other areas to deal with large events under what is called ‘mutual aid’.
A senior Downing Street official told the press that this ‘standing army’ would be an enhanced version of mutual aid.
No one in the Labour government has defined what these ‘enhanced powers’ will be, nor have they ruled out the army being called in if the police lack enough public order officers to be sent across the country.
What is clear, is that behind the excuse of a crackdown on ‘right wing rioters’ Starmer’s Labour government is preparing for a police state backed by the military to crack down not on a relatively small number of virulently right-wing thugs but on the real enemy of capitalism – the working class.
This is not the first time in the history of British capitalism that right-wing and neo-Nazi foot soldiers have provided the excuse for the capitalist state to attempt to impose its rule over the masses of workers.
In 1936, Parliament passed the Public Order Act, which gave the police powers to ban demonstrations and control ‘extremist political movements’.
While it was claimed to be aimed at Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, in practice, it remained on the statute book and was used almost exclusively against the trade unions and the working class.
It was rarely used against the fascists who were defeated by the working class in the famous 1936 ‘Battle of Cable Street’ when workers in their thousands turned out to stop a march by Mosley’s fascists and ended Mosley’s dream of a fascist dictatorship on the streets of East London.
The Public Order Act was used widely during the 1984/85 miners strike to attack picket lines and launch violent attacks by the police on miners’ demonstrations, most notoriously at the Battle of Orgreave when police from all over the country launched a vicious attack on miners demonstrating against pit closures.
The then Tory prime minster, Margaret Thatcher, had a long-developed plan to take on and smash the unions, starting with the powerful National Union of Mineworkers.
Thatcher created a ‘national police force’ for the first time in the UK and paved the way for Starmer’s ‘standing army’ with enhanced powers – powers that will be used against pro-Palestinian demonstrations and any mass action by trade unions and youth against the savage austerity that this Labour government is preparing to inflict on workers to keep a bankrupt capitalist system from complete collapse.
Thatcher failed to smash the trade unions, while the last Tory government – despite arming itself with anti-strike laws designed to force workers to accept having their wages cut to ensure the profits of the bosses, along with the Public Order Act that gave police powers to ban demonstrations and picket lines – was too weak to put them into action.
The capitalist class is now relying on Starmer and the Labour government to do the job of imposing an out-and-out police state to hold back a powerful working class that refuses to be driven into the gutter of poverty to rescue the profits of the bankers and bosses, and refuses to remain passive over genocide in Gaza.
Now is the time for the working class to force the TUC leaders to take action and put an end to Starmer’s drive towards a police state by immediately calling a special congress of the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Starmer-led government and replace it with a workers’ government and a socialist planned economy.
This is the only way forward today – join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership prepared to organise the British Socialist Revolution.