Police Practice Violence

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Women ON a sunny Sunday, August 8, a group of women were selling kebabs at a community festival at Islington's Paradise Park, to raise funds for Women's Fightback.

It had been a lovely festival, with lots of fun for kids, nice music, a real ale tent. We'd had a steady stream of appreciative customers and were nearing the end of our supplies when five male louts came up.

After ten minutes winding us up, they picked a fight in which one of us WOMEN'S Women's Fightback badge, in yellow and red 20p (plus 15p post) for one, 15p each post free for orders of ten or more, from 41 Ellington Street, London N7 (Women's Fightback)

was punched and kicked and both got burning charcoal thrown at us. A woman bystander was also punched.

The hatred, destructiveness and violence directed at us were due to nothing other than that we were women. We feel that incidents like this one should not be let to pass unnoticed.

The previous day, we had done our kebab stall at a CND festival in Leytonstone, where women were insulted by a band called Jimmy Riddle and the Pisspots, which included three women done up in black satin corsets, suspenders and various S&M accessories. The band's advance publicity in the local paper had boasted that it was unashamedly sexist, but because it had played for nothing, CND had gone ahead with the booking.

If the so-called left puts on stuff like that, and puts up with it, it's little wonder that a woman's group can't even run a kebab stall at a loca festival without facing male violence.

We're still desperately short of funds, and would welcome donations. •Practice makes perfect... THE Metropolitan Police are using derelict industrial land in south London for 'riot training'. They have leased ten acres on River Way, Greenwich, near the southern end of the Blackwall Tunnel, from the South-Eastern Gas Board.

The way this has been done highlights the special powers the police have built up. The London Borough of Greenwich was notified under the 1971 suwu alu wounty fland- Iram and Monta, Diass ing Act, but it cannot refuse planning permission. All it can do is 'raise objections' Not only that, but the police only had to give two weeks' notice instead of the usual two months.

One Greenwich councillor who watched the training told the. Greenwich Mercury that the police were wearing green boiler suits and helmets, carrying out 'shield exercises' and practising unarmed combat. There are rumours CS gas has been used.

Greenwich MP Guy Barnett has been contacted by two people. who "were seen off the premises in rather a rough fashion' He has put down a question to the Home Secretary. The borough council has raised an objection and will press for a public inquiry.

The recent record of the police in south-east London makes the purpose of this 'riot training' clear enough.

In 1977 they attacked anti-fascists when the National Front marched through Lewisham. Since then they have done nothing to stop racist attacks on black people.

When the Sikh temple in Woolwich was under nightly attack from the British Movement the police came and searched the temple for weapons.

When 13 black you were killed in the Deptford fire in January 1981, all the efforts of the police were directed to finding a black culprit.

Later last year the police arrested four 'right to work' campaigners on a local demonstration and physically attacked an officer of the Thames Polytechnic Students Union, which was supporting the demonstration. Another 'right to work' campaigner was arrested for leafleting outside a secondary school.

Greenwich

The leader of the Tory minority on Greenwich council declared that the police should be allowed to prepare to defend themselves against organised violent attacks.

In reality, 'riot training' threatens violence against unemployed youth. blacks and anti-fascists!

TONY EART

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ialist, Organiser no. 95 August 12 1982. Page 4 _SOLDARNISG-