Mersey and London Cops Say:we're the Lawe

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been a neutral force, equally Anderton make no secret of and demarraticallv con- their nolitical stand. And The police have never Cops like McNee and IF THE law restricts the police, change the law. If complaints procedures hamper the cops, obstruct the procedures.

If supervision by eleced bodies limits the police hen stop the supervision. I consultation with local communities cramps their activities, too bad for consultation.

In short: 'the law' is the That was the message put ácross last week by Merseyside and London cops. Turning all notions of control of the police by elected bodies on their head, the Merseyside Police Federation demanded the resignation of Margaret Simey as chair of the local police committee.

"It was a unanimous decision. We feel we can no longer work with her" the cops said, after Simey had criticised them in evidence to a parliamentary select committee.

Their reaction rather confirmed Simey's criticism -that people had no effective procedure for complaints against the police, that the police took vengeance on people attempting to use the existing procedures, and that as a result the Toxteth riots weIe "one massive complaint" against the police.

Just the next day Leslie walker, a Deputy Assistant Commissioner in charge ot a South London area including Brixton, angrily complained that Lord Scarman's mild recommendations about consultation with local communities would make police work impossible.

Scarman responded that he was not condemning out of hand activities like the notorious Operation Swamp' - a saturation-level police invasion of Brixton's streets last year - only suggesting that the police be more tactful! But Walker did not seem satisfied.

The police have already been pressing for big changes in the law governing treatment of suspects - and justifying their pressure with the argument that they regularly flout the existing law, and so the law better be changed to suit their practices.

Further evidence of how the police are a law unto themselves was presented last week by the Guardian on bugging. Secret guidelines leaked to the Guardian show that police can plant microphones, tape recorders and cameras on just the say-so of a Chief Constable. One example was the bugging of a phone box in a Welsh village, revealed this January.

The police philosophy of law and order is best exemplified by the 5,000-strong MIS unit. MI5 has no legal existence whatsoever, it reports to no-one, and its activities and finances are checked by no-one.

Far from MIS being under the control of Parliament, it is certain that many MPs, including ministers in Labour governments, are under surveillance by MIS.

The significant shift over the last ten years or so is that special units like MIS -the Special Branch, the Special Patrol Group, etc. -have become more important within the police, the whole police force has been pressing for (and grabbing) more of the 'above the law' status possessed by Mi); ana ponce VALINIO aMIT MiS. and nolice chiefs like Robert Mark, David McNee, Kenneth Oxford, James Anderton and Leslie Walker have come out openly as political figures.

The police have never TWO hours after the start of the London Assembly I first heard the word ''Tory": members of the audience were shouting it at someone from Enfield who was accusing the Greater London Council and UCHULLaLIVUNJ trolled by millionaires workers to keep society harmonious. In a society torn by class struggle, they take sides.

Cops like McNee of overspending . . . on cheap fares, homosexuals, and so on...

In order to build a broad base of support, the organisers were trying to play down any clear antifrom the Occupation Committee even a "liberal' cop like Devon police chief John Alderson was proposing a new Riot Act after the riots last summer.

The police force is set up... The police force is set up Tory policy, though there was a deep anti-Tory feeling among the audience.

Who were the organisers? It's hard to say. Ken Livingstone was at pains to deny that it was the GLC's idea. Politically it seemed to follow the recipe, shared by the Communist Party and the Workers Revolutionary Party, of community councils.

The London Assembly was supposed to bring together representatives of trade unions, tenants associations, church organisations, single issue campaigns, pressure groups, local Labour Parties and ventions and courtesies of formal democracy by the growing tension of the class Against rickets, workers' occupations and street demonstrations, the police are increasingly demanding a free hand.

Socialists should not be indifferent to the limited formal controls which remain. Indeed, we should argue for Labour councillors on police committees to use their position much more vigorously, to demand the sacking of chief constables like Merseyside's Kenneth Oxford or Manchester's James Anderton.

And we should support moves made by, for example, the Labour GLC; to establish monitoring committees and to demand an elected police authority for London, where none exists at present.

Roy Hattersley has floated proposals for police authorities to be all elected members (one third at present are unelected magistrates) and for them to have the power to decide policing policy (at present they can Council, Westway Laundry Group, Gay Ice Breakers, Bangladeshi Workers' Association, Federation of London Adult Students ...

were there.

Even so, attendance was much smaller than could be expected: there were no more than 600 • at the height.

Communist Party speakers - much in evidence as might be expected with Jack Dromey having something to do with the choosing the speakers' slips - stressed the need for broad organisation.

Thus the inimitable Kevin Walker and the Merseyside cops makes it clear that any serious extension of formal democratic control over the police would lead to police chiefs flouting, ignoring, or point blank rejecting control.

Suppose the Labour GLC had had formal control over London's police during the Brixton rots last year, and had instructed the police to withdraw from Brixton and hand over to labour movement/community patrols. What then? Undoubtedly the cops would have flatly refused, citing higher interests of 'law and order'.

Labour councillors would buckle under - which is the practice of nearly all of them on police authorities at present - or face the task of organising the labour movement and the communities to set up their own patrols, under democratic control, in opposition to the police.

Such working-class patrols - the basis for working class "law and order' -will be the only alternative to the bosses' 'law and order' raising itself increasingly as a brutal power above society.

Andrew Hornung and theft".

But NUPE's policy is t support such councils unless they are axing NUPE members, because confrontation with the Government would be dis astrous.

Little is likely to com from such a gathering not even a strengthener fares fight, the least tha should have been attemp ted. The most positiv thing that came out of i was a better overview of th extent of the attacks on th working class and the dra» ing in - and on to the stag - of a large number ‹ women representin community groups, pare