The police:

The police do a very brave and demanding, sometimes dangerous job. They are not in a very profitable career, they are working for the community, protecting people from eachother and themselves. When something horrible happens, a murder, rape, a hostage situation or whatever, who has to go in and sort things out ? I'm glad it is not me !!! The police deserve respect for that.

However, it seems that Scotland Yard are being used not just to uphold the law and make the streets safer. By selective enforcement of the law, they are using the law for political ends - not the suppression of protest itself, but the suppression of anticapitalism, whether that is through protest or through lifestyle.

I was chatting to the police outside the squat in Borough and put my points to him, saying that there are thousands of squats all over London but the police choose these ones to raid because the people in it were preparing for the demonstration (with banners and props rather than batons and CS gas !). Was he happy about it ? He said he didn't really want to know about that kind of stuff and that he was just doing his job. I asked where he would draw the line asking how political the police force could become before he became unhappy about working for them, conversation over... He was the only policeman there who would talk to anyone.

Unfortunately, as respectful as the role of Policeman in any community is, the only job where you get paid to use violence to hurt people and force them to do what they dont want to do is inevitably going to attract people who love a bit of violence and intimidation. It is quite probable that hundreds of people get beaten by the police every day in Britain alone... What would be interesting is how many of the actual police on the streets really give a dam about the politics behind what they are told to do, and also the extent if any to which the police coordinators at Scotland Yard let politics affect their decisions.

We can only judge them by their actions.

One of the comments made by a policeman to the arrested yesterday was:

"We can do ANYTHING because we are the police"

Erm Officer:

WE CAN DO ANYTHING, BECAUSE WE ARE MANY, BECAUSE WE ARE RIGHT AND BECAUSE WE ARE WINNING"