'Community policing' Drop the charges!

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'ROOTS, Rules and Tribulation' is a play written by Andrew Bethell, the ex-head of English at Brondesbury and Kilburn High School.

It concerns six years of doing community service, and involves racial, sexual and social conflict in modern Britain.

The performance of the play on Wednesday, March 9 at Bromsbury and Kilburn school didn't take place, however. Many of the cast had joined 100 of their schoolmates down at Kilburn police station to demand the release of 3 black B&K school students, who had been arrested at half past three that afternoon.

Witnesses told SO that a fight had started between 3 racist youths, who were not B&K students, and the 3 arrested.

When the first police arrived, they went straight for the black youth, which caused their schoolmates to protest.

Isolated Feeling isolated, the police called up reinforcements. Witnesses told us that four vans arrived, aswell as a car of plain clotes police. Police drew truncheons, pushed students around, and almost ran over several of them as they screamed off, closing the doors as they went -real Sweeney-style.

The school students went down to the station en masse to demand their friends be whalein do Really we only want to help....

released, and that the racists be arrested, which eventually occurred.

Even the policeman injured in the incident, PC Strachon, told the local paper that he thought the local police had 'Erred in only arresting the blacks at first' Some police tried to convince us on the night that the SPG weren't involved. Well, we feel that it wasn't the SPG, but the instant Response Unit (a synonym for the SPG when under local control).

The SPG issue has been a live one in Brent for a couple of years now. In 1981 they went into Harlsedon, and now they've been sent into Kilburn for the last three weeks.

This itself caused a local furore when the police only told the Council about it the night before they were due to go in. Most Labour councillors refused to attend the neeting, or walked out, as it ecame clear that this 'consultation' was nothing but a sham.

'No objection'

A local meeting on the South Kilburn estate had been held six weeks before, and, in a wide-ranging discussion on estate security, not one tenant called for SPG-type presence.

The Brent community Ielations council bears a lot of responsibility for this by indicating to the police that they had had no objection to the SPG going into Kilburn' • This attitude has got to be changed.

'Brent East CLP passed an emergency resolution the next night, calling for the SPG's removal from the area; its disbandment; a public inquiry into the incident; and for the fledgling Police Committee to take up this incident.

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Cricklewood AUEW has sent a similar resolution to the Police Committee and the Trades Council, where we hope to have it debated this Wednesday, 23rd.

There has been a lively debate over policing in Kilburn, in which the local paper attacks Socialist Organiser's position on labour movement community patrols. SO's response included various accusations of police malpractices in Kilburn nick, evidence of which is at present being collected.

The local police have tried desperately to present a 'Community Police' image to the population at large, whilst not changing their more traditional practices. In fact, while we were waiting in the station for the youths to be relcased, my eye caught a poster by the desk. Yes, it was an advert for Roots, Rules and Tribulations'' Woods concerning Colin Roach's death and in addition the increased viciousness of the police, with arrests now numbering over 80 - the vast majority of them black youth.

Speakers from the campaign stressed the difficulties they were experiencing as a result of police harassment, but how they were still maintaining a regular Saturday picket. outside Stoke Newington Police Station, where Colin died.

On his arrest, Dennis Twomey saw the police. coming for. him in the mistaken belief that as a white person he was responsible for bringing the white people to the demonstration and must be some sort of leader. Halimat Babama came to Britain from Nigeria in 1980 to join her husband. In July 1982, after separating from her husband because of his violence, she applied to the Home Office for permanent residence for herself and her two young children, Hakeem, aged four, and Mustapha, aged one. She was refused. She is appealing against this decision.

The Home Office has given no date for the appeal.

Halimat points out that her children will be iken the grounds that he shouldn't have been there!

A defence committee with backing from sympaColin Roach mart's ap!

from her, that her husband's violence will continue and that she herself will be made destitute if she is forced to return to Nigeria.

A leading expert in Muslim Law, Dr. David Pearl of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, has confirmed that Halimat's husband "would have little ditticulty in obtaining custody". He adds, "so far as authority over the wife is concerned, the husband has the right to control the wife's activities such as whether she works and so ised this meeting and are looking to spread the campaign throughout the borough, but especially within Tower Hamlets Labour Party, which though already supporting it, has not gone beyond the paper resolution stage.

In addition, left coun cillors facing expulsion for following Labour Party policy are attempting to set up. a police committee, which like that in neighbouring Hackney, can try to focus the labour movement and bring about police accountability in the long run.

The meeting endorsed the Roach Family Support Committee call for a full independent inquiry into the death of Colin Roach.

betall on."

What you can do:

1. Write to. David Waddington, The Home Office, 50 Queen Anne's Gate, London SW1.

Write to Halimat's MP, Stan Cohen, House of Commons, London SW1.

Write to your own MP.

2. Pass resolutions of support for Halimat at your union branch, women's group, etc and send donations.

Contact: Friends of Halimat Babamba, Box HB, 59 Cookridge St., Leeds LS2.

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Socialist Organiser no 125, March 24, 1983, Page 4 legacy leads to Assam massacre In FINES against the confe eration of Quebec's teachers' unions, the Cl could total 5.5 million Canadian dollars [£3 14,000 teachers have been charged under the province's labour codes, and 145 charges have been brought against the CEQ, against constituent unions, and against union officials, under the Quebec government's draconian new No charges have yet beer brought against individuals under Law 111 — if they are, the total in fines could rise much higher still.

The charges arose from strike action taken by the teachers against moves by the provincial government to extend working hours and cut jobs. The government has also cut and frozen public sector wages.

Despite calls by other union leaders for all-out action in their support, the CEQ and other teachers' unions have suspended their strike action. Initially it was until March 14, and now, for the duration of negotiations with thirdparty conciliators.

The government still insists that, while it will modify details, it will not budge on the total amount of the cuts in its teachers' wage bill.

"THE easiest thing in the world would have been to bull-headed and not agree"

So claimed Joseph Odor cich, the vice-president of the American United Steel Workers Union, as he emerged from marathon talks with the seven main steel firms in which eventually took the 'harder' course - and conceded a 9% wage cut for his 260,000 members!

His rationalisation for concessions that saddle steelworkers with a 41month deal while handlin‹ the employers a $2 billion bonus was a classic statement of the thinking of reformist union leaders around the world.

Instead of starting from the needs of the workers, and the defence of their interests, he sees first the problems of the employers 'To have a union you have to have a company — and that company has to make money"

It is no great surprise read such statement for Us trade union leaders, who like almost every American bureaucrat, is tied hand and foot to the twin political parties of US capitalism - the Democrate and Republicans. IN the last few weeks, well over 2,500 people have been killed in communal violence in the state of Assam in No h-East Indiá.

In the worst-hit area, the Brahmaputra Valley, martial law was deciared on 1 Wednesday March 2 in a desperate attempt to stop communal riots. Here, 230,000 people have been made homeless and the refugees have settled in 130 camps in Assam and West Bengal.

Of the casualties, 1,000 were Bengali Muslims murdered by local hill tribes in the midst of a mass 'antiforeigner' campaign.

The occasion for the communal atrocities was the decision of Indira Gandhi's Congress (I) government to hold a state election in Assam after a year of direct rule from Delhi which saw a marked increase in Assamese chauvinist agitation.

The origins of the conflict date back to the consolidation of British rule and the colonial development of the area.

Migrate

Before 1901 Assam, despite its high soil fertility and abundance of well-irrigated land, had not been developed by either the Assamese or the British. From 1901 onwards, however, peasants from the densely populated Bengal began to migrate to Assam in search of land. This process started slowly but was quickened by the extension of the rail network in 1903 and the unification of Assam and East Bengal into one administrative unit by the British from 1905 to 1912.

By 1921, 258,000 Bengalis had settled in the Goalpara district of the Brahmaputra valley, and by 1947 the numbers of settlers and their dependents numbered over one million.

ALY MIR looks

at the history of the recent conflicts in North East India.

conquer the Indian sub-continent in the eighteenth century. From 1920, the colonial administrators introduced a type of apartheid -the line system' - which geographically separated Assamese from Bengall, and so reduced local conflict mn the short-term while continuing immigration and maintaining communal mistrust. The Assamese agitated for stricter controls on Bengali immigration.

By 1936, 37.7% of the total occupied land in Assam's Nowgong district was under Bengali settlement, whilst 62.3% was still under Assamese cultivation. Yet many thousands of landhungry Muslims still wanted to move to Assam, and resented their forced settlement on crowded settlement land whilst vast areas of Assamese land went uncultivated.

Organise

Soon the Bengalis began to organise against the segregation and they received support from some Assamese Muslims, such as Khan Bahudur Nuruddin Ahmed, who tried - unsuccessfully - to unite Bengali and Assamese Muslims.

In 1926 the chauvinist demagogue Ambikagiri Raychaudhury organised the sing down of Bengali school classes and the introduction of tighter segregation.

The bourgeois nationalists of the Indian National Congress equivocated on the question of opposition to the line system and adapted to Hindu prejudice. Congress leader Jauraharlal Nehm echoed the concerns of the colonialists when he said in 1937: From the point of view of developing Assam and making it a wealthy province immigration is desirable. The real problem iș how to control and organise this immigration.' Another Congress leader, Rajendra Prasad, considered introducing Bihari Hindus to Assam to hold back and intimidate the Bengali Muslims!

Left isolated from the Assamese Muslims and deserted by the Congress, the Bengalis organised under Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan in opposition to the Assamese Hindu majority. "The Maulana of Bhasani', as he became known, exploited the immigrants vulnerability in order to build a political base for himself on a peasartt land reform programme and the preservation of the Bengalee language.

In 1943 the colonialdominated Assam governCHINA SIKKIM NEPAL Ganges INDIA WEST BENGAL • Calcutta ment moved towards dismantling the line system in the areas where Hindus were in a safe majority. Yet this only provided chauvinist Assamese groups with an opportunity to raise the 'Hinduism in Danger' slogan, whilst the Muslim League pressed for the complete abolition of the line.

Sir Saadulla's government continued to hope that this compromise might work. But prolonged governmentsponsored All-Party Talks in 1945 revealed that there was no basis for agreement between the Muslims, who wanted the abolition of line segregation, and Congress, which 1 refused to even accept an amnesty for Bengalis who had illegally settled on land eight or more years ago!

Thus, by the end of the period of direct British colonial control, Assam, already legally divided into two sepatate electorates, was socially, divided, and as Partition transformed East Bengal into East Pakistan communal violence broke out.

Three years after India became independent, communal riots erupted Miles I 100 ¡RHUITAN MEGHALAYA ]BANGLADESH II TRIPURA Bay of Bengal again in Assam and 100,000 Muslims were forced out. The Congress regime in Delhi suppressed the dissent of the Assamese and hill tribes, but neither Delhi, nor the Assamese-dominated state council of Ministers, made any effort to tackle the fundamental cause of the communal friction, which was the unequal land settlement and the separation of Hindu from Moslem.

The communal violence of 1950 intimidated many Bengalis into falsely giving their language as Assamese in answer to census officials. The publication of this census in 1951 gave the Assamese an apparently substantial majority, and the Assamese mobilised to remove Bengalis from prominent positions.

But after 1971 things changed. The Pakistani civil war which created Bangladesh also led to a considerable refugee displacement -many settling in neighbouring Assam.

This restored some of the confidence of the Muslims and led to a revival of the Bangalee language. This in turn alarmed sections of the Assamese petty bourgeoisie who raised the old 'Hinduism in Danger' slogan of the 1930s and encouraged a Hindu-Assamese cultural revival.

Stalinists

It is ironic that two of the most prominent Assamese writers to be revered in this chauvinist climate have been Jyoti Prasas Agarwala, once a sympathiser of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and Bishna Prasad, formerly a member of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party of India PRADESH MANIPUR BURMA MIZORAM !II BT2!!

PAK. CHINA IDIA AREA OF MAIN MAP SRI LANKA In four years four state governments have been brought down by 'people's strikes' and "people's curfews'. Oil production, vital to Indian capitalism, and banks and local government offices were all closed. The All-Assam Students' Union had led the calls for mass repatriation and denials of rights to Bengali immigrants.

Faced with the choice of giving power to the popularfront Left and Democratic Alliance', led by the Communist Party of India, or imposing Presidential rule' • Assam's governor chose to do the latter because Congress (I) had proved completely incapable either of controlling communal violence or crushing the Tea Workers' Strike (Assam's biggest ever labour protest).

When the year of Presidential Rule allowed under the constitution expired, Gandhi gambled on calling the election. But the boycott by the extreme right and the world focus on the elections led to the near hysteria that caused India's worst communal atrocities since Partition.

Even tnougn Congress-cu eat the Lett « Democrati Alliance the victory is a hollow one given the destabilising influence oi. the violence and the Assamese strikes that have paralysed most of the state.

The crisis in Assam is a result both of British colonialism's near-apartheid land settlement segregation, and the post-independence Iecord of the Indian bourgoisie which has neglected India's remote peripheral states and become increasingly dependent on imperialism.

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ASS Brahmaputra

Dhaka VA -

IAM "NAGALAND