PM JOHNSON announced the latest draconian lockdown rules in the House of Commons last Tuesday, with the threat that, if not obeyed to the letter, he was prepared to call in the military to force obedience
Johnson told MPs that there would now be ‘greater police presence’ on the streets with ‘the option to draw on military support where required.’
The ‘option’ of putting troops on the streets alongside the police to enforce the diktats of the Tory government is nothing less than the preparation for the Tories to move directly to declaring martial law over the working class and young people.
It is workers and youth especially that Johnson has singled out as the culprits for the deadly increase in coronavirus – shifting blame from his government that has deliberately accelerated the infection and death rate through their drive to force a return to work and reopening capitalism for the bosses.
The claim that this was merely about the army freeing up more police officers did not impress former head of the army, general Lord Richard Dannatt.
He wrote an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph headed ‘Deploying the military to police civilians is not how our liberal democracy works.’ Dannatt is clearly worried about Johnson openly bringing the army out to confront workers, a move he described as ‘alarming’.
Dannatt wrote: ‘Ever since the so-called Peterloo Massacre of 1819, when militia on horses were deployed to try and control a crowd of people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation and a number of people were killed, there has always been a determination to keep the military away from actively policing the public in Great Britain.’
Dannatt is being disingenuous when he talks of the cavalry being deployed to control the 60,000 men, women and children who peacefully gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand the vote.
They charged into the crowd to arrest the speakers with sabres drawn, killing 18 and injuring up to seven hundred. The demonstration reflected the anger of the working class at the mass unemployment and poverty inflicted on them at the time.
Dannatt, in invoking this historical precedent as a warning, is clearly drawing parallels with today. With the working class facing mass unemployment and poverty on an unprecedented scale, a class conflict is set to explode.
Dannatt insists that ever since Peterloo ‘there has always been a determination to keep the military away from actively policing the public in Great Britain.’
He does make the exception of the bloody war waged against the Irish people in the north of Ireland ‘during the Troubles between 1969 and 2007’, an exception he clearly approves of.
The murderous regime of martial law saw paratroopers shooting unarmed demonstrators during Bloody Sunday, and undercover murder squads acting with impunity throughout the province.
As the ruling class ditches the pretence of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and moves to a police/military state, the methods of state terror honed in Ireland are being brought home.
The same edition of the Telegraph reveals that Johnson is to unveil this week laws that ‘will allow organisations such as MI5 to sanction agents to carry out “necessary and proportionate” offences – but it may remain unclear whether there will be limits to what crime can be authorised.’
It quotes a source with knowledge of the proposed laws saying that it would impose ‘no limit on the type of crime’ an agent acting for a state organisation could commit without fear of legal consequences. In the Telegraph’s words ‘New laws could give spies a licence to kill’!
The ruling class and their Tory party are acting not out of strength, but out of desperation, in the knowledge that the powerful working class will not accept mass unemployment and poverty as the price to keep a bankrupt capitalist system from collapse.
With the Labour Party and trade union leaders doing nothing except offer their full support to Johnson’s plans, the working class must take its own independent action by mobilising strikes and demonstrations to bring down the Tories and go forward to a workers government and socialism.
This is the way to put an end to the threat of martial law by smashing and breaking up the capitalist state! PM JOHNSON announced the latest draconian lockdown rules in the House of Commons last Tuesday, with the threat that, if not obeyed to the letter, he was prepared to call in the military to force obedience
Johnson told MPs that there would now be ‘greater police presence’ on the streets with ‘the option to draw on military support where required.’
The ‘option’ of putting troops on the streets alongside the police to enforce the diktats of the Tory government is nothing less than the preparation for the Tories to move directly to declaring martial law over the working class and young people.
It is workers and youth especially that Johnson has singled out as the culprits for the deadly increase in coronavirus – shifting blame from his government that has deliberately accelerated the infection and death rate through their drive to force a return to work and reopening capitalism for the bosses.
The claim that this was merely about the army freeing up more police officers did not impress former head of the army, general Lord Richard Dannatt.
He wrote an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph headed ‘Deploying the military to police civilians is not how our liberal democracy works.’ Dannatt is clearly worried about Johnson openly bringing the army out to confront workers, a move he described as ‘alarming’.
Dannatt wrote: ‘Ever since the so-called Peterloo Massacre of 1819, when militia on horses were deployed to try and control a crowd of people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation and a number of people were killed, there has always been a determination to keep the military away from actively policing the public in Great Britain.’
Dannatt is being disingenuous when he talks of the cavalry being deployed to control the 60,000 men, women and children who peacefully gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand the vote.
They charged into the crowd to arrest the speakers with sabres drawn, killing 18 and injuring up to seven hundred. The demonstration reflected the anger of the working class at the mass unemployment and poverty inflicted on them at the time.
Dannatt, in invoking this historical precedent as a warning, is clearly drawing parallels with today. With the working class facing mass unemployment and poverty on an unprecedented scale, a class conflict is set to explode.
Dannatt insists that ever since Peterloo ‘there has always been a determination to keep the military away from actively policing the public in Great Britain.’
He does make the exception of the bloody war waged against the Irish people in the north of Ireland ‘during the Troubles between 1969 and 2007’, an exception he clearly approves of.
The murderous regime of martial law saw paratroopers shooting unarmed demonstrators during Bloody Sunday, and undercover murder squads acting with impunity throughout the province.
As the ruling class ditches the pretence of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and moves to a police/military state, the methods of state terror honed in Ireland are being brought home.
The same edition of the Telegraph reveals that Johnson is to unveil this week laws that ‘will allow organisations such as MI5 to sanction agents to carry out “necessary and proportionate” offences – but it may remain unclear whether there will be limits to what crime can be authorised.’
It quotes a source with knowledge of the proposed laws saying that it would impose ‘no limit on the type of crime’ an agent acting for a state organisation could commit without fear of legal consequences. In the Telegraph’s words ‘New laws could give spies a licence to kill’!
The ruling class and their Tory party are acting not out of strength, but out of desperation, in the knowledge that the powerful working class will not accept mass unemployment and poverty as the price to keep a bankrupt capitalist system from collapse.
With the Labour Party and trade union leaders doing nothing except offer their full support to Johnson’s plans, the working class must take its own independent action by mobilising strikes and demonstrations to bring down the Tories and go forward to a workers government and socialism.
This is the way to put an end to the threat of martial law by smashing and breaking up the capitalist state!
