Tory Bill a lurch towards police state

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VWIARD Varo POLICF The trial of the Newham 8 opens on November 10 at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Holly bush Hill, London Ell (near Snaresbrook underground station), and the Defence Committee is calling for a mass picket eenham women weapuns and close those bases, t is not at all clear that the US administration would agree o do so. They would almost certainly respond by pointing to agreements reached with earlier British governments under which these bases were made available and express their view that these agreements must be upheld and could not be unilaterally abrogated by a British government.

Only at that stage would the British House of Commons and the British people be made aware of the surrender of soveria ANDREW WIARD, Report eignty and democratic control by Parliament over peace and war which has already taken place secretly, reducing us to colonial status in our'relations with the US and its armed forces.

*Footnote: Socialist Organiser carried a series of articles disputing Tony Benn's central political conclusion that the labour movement must lead a fight for "British national liberation". Copies are available from Socialist Organiser.

бу bo THE TORIES have announced their revised version of the Police Bill. Like its predecessor it grants the police extensive new powers.

Its stated rationale is to create a 'balance' between the rights of individuals and the powers of the community and to rationalise' the large number of laws and bye-laws governing police Report powers.

It assumes that the police even though the communty"

are - increasingly - deprived of any means of holding the police accountable for what they do in our name.

It assumes that the 'community' has an interest in its members being subjected to police harassment, arrest, detention and search.

It assumes that the 'war against crime' will be aided by the further alienation of the outside the court room. police from the people.

It assumes that where the police in practice currently official report the Policy violate their legitimate powers, Studies Institute criticised the the extent of their powers should Met. for the way they be increased rather than their abuses suppressed.

All these assumptions onable suspicion" , it said, does course rubbish. not act as an effective constraint whether to make a stop.

Transition ved, no good reason could What is in fact going on is one seen. Only about one in twelve further step - this time a legis- stops led to further legal action lative one - in the transition being taken. There were numerfrom a social democratic police ous cases of abusive and rude force to the emergence of a behaviour by the police. police state.

The fact that both sorts of the use of stop and search police represent the repressive powers by the Met as a means of arm of the bourgeois state racial harassment have should not blind us to the deep made. The response of the significance of what is taking government is to generalise and place. extend these powers.

While the government's extension of police powers has been considerably extended marks a real attack on democrat- o legitimise the arrest of people ic rights and specifically on for any offence working class communities, it minor ones like littering or hides behind the veil of defend- parking, - if the police are not ing the needs of individuals to satisfied as to the identity of the be secure from crime and the suspect or the permanence of his needs of communities to sup- or her address; or if the police press crime. While these needs think that the arrest is necessary are real, the government's to prevent injury to persons or solutions are entirely illusory. property, a an obstruction to Take the issue of stop and search. The police throughout the highway.

This vast extension of powers the country will get the power to stop and search people on the will hit particularly hard the streets if they have 'reasonable homeless and gays, who could suspicion' that the suspect be arrested not for any criminal offence but for their "affront possesses stolen goods - a to public decency" power that previously existed only in London.

In addition they will receive As in the old Bill, detention an entirely new power to stop ted for up to four days in the and search for offensive weapons which has not previously existed at all.

ised by a magistrate's court.

New power be delaved for up to 36 hours.

The poliee will also be empowered to stop and search people inside houses and gardens if they suspect that the person being searched does not live there abolished.

or is there without the owner's consent. that the existing abuse For the first time the police vill be given the power to use reasonable force' if they think it necessary, whether or not there is resistance.

The new Bill states that a in effect be legally sanctioned.

constable need give no informa978-030935 ssro 420/00 2040:200 23 As it happens, this week an ter, firearms, hijacking, nostage taking etc - but adds that any crime may be called serious if its commission leads to or is likely existing stop and search to lead to a) serious harm to the The criterion of "reas- security of the state or to public order; b) serious interference with the administration of jushow the police decide tice; c) anyone's death; d)

serious injury; e) substantial In a third of the stops obser- financial gain; or f) serious financial loss to anyone.

This definition embraces public order offences like obstruction and threatening behaviour as well a petty theft, where the police feel that the Numerous nther accounts of victim feels that he or she has suffered a "serious loss'"!

Take the question of road blocks. The existing absence of statutory definitions of police powers to set up roadblocks will be changed into an explicit legal Take the power of arrest. It power tu establish roadblocks for inuefinite periods wherever the "pattern uf crime" calls for SDP apologists, like the Guardian's Michael Zander, treat this as a "restriction" on police powers by treating the previous lack of statutory definition as a carte blanche for the police to do whatever they like! •an affront to public The new Bill, like the old one, allows the police to search under warrant the homes and premises of people not suspected of committing any criminal offence. "Fishing"

A search warrant may be Take the powers of detention. issued where refusal of entry is considered "unreasonable" or without charge is to be permit- where "the purpose of the search may be frustrated" "serious arrestable unless immediate entry is offence". Detentions of longer gained by the police. than 36 hours must be author- This will legitimise all kinds •*- "fishing expeditions" for Access to a lawyer may als evidence by the police, and to use any evidence found with Existing rights of 'habeas cor- regard to any offence. pus" — long upheld by liberals Exemptichs have been made is the syinbol and foundations of social workers, "journalistic - after much lobbying - for iberty before the law - will be doctors and What this means in effect is material", though what legally counts as journalism is up for "habeas corpus" by the police grabs. and the iudges, to give the The police will be given the police time to inte ›gate sus- pi wer to conduct intimate body pects for a few aays without searches of vaginas and anuses access to the outside world, will of suspects, with or without their consent, with or without Further, the definition of the cooperation of doctors; to what counts as a "serious arres- search for articles which could 'able offence" is made even be used to cause physical injury.

It lists a number of specific The Bill also allows the police crimes - murder, manslaugh- use force to take fingerprints and body samples from suspects detained in police stations, a power which could in effect legalise assaults. on suspects by the police.

The 'safeguards' proposed by the Bill are paltry. It mentions tape-recording of interrogation, but postpones its establishment for years.

It replaces ihe Police Conplaints Board with a Police Complaints Authority, but this nominal change dues little or nothing to create an independent investigation of complaints about police malpractice.

It establishes an 'independent prosecutor" under the central direction of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the effect of which is to set up another bureaucratic layer and te remove the tiny amount of accountability to police authorities to which police prosecutors are currently subject.

The Bill in general, like the Royal Commission before it, removes sanctions for the greater part of police malpractice and abuse of powers away from the sphere of legal sanction by the courts and recasts them solely as matters for internal police discipline.

Nowhere to be seen is even Scarman's recommendation that police racism should be made into a punishable oftence.

The idea that the police are servants either of the community or the law becomes ever more an empty phrase.

The government has undertaken an unprecedented public relations exercise to justify the Bill and disguise its real nature. This includes the publication of a 67-page Home Office document.

We must expose the extension of police powers which this Bill actually means and the repressiveness of its provisions. The National Campaign Against the Police Bill is holding a general meeting open to all members on Monday 14 November. at 7.00pm at Holborn Town Hall; a National Conference on Saturday November 19 at Sir William Collins School, Charrington St., London NW1; and a march on Saturday 21 January from Brockwell Park to Trafalgar Square. We need to think hard about the strategies that are being and should be used to combat this escalation in police

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