Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Propaganda campaign mounted to justify brutal G20 policing

Julie Hyland | 24.04.2009 17:35 | G20 London Summit | Repression

A concerted effort is being made to limit criticism of police actions during protests surrounding the G20 summit in London, and even to justify them.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has been forced to mount several investigations into police violence during the demonstrations on April 1 and 2. These include an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of 47-year-old newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson, who was making his way home from work on April 1 when he became caught up in a police “kettling” operation involving the forcible detention of hundreds of protesters in side-streets.

Police initially denied any contact with Tomlinson and a first post-mortem claimed that he had died from a heart attack. Video footage subsequently showed that the father of nine had been hit from behind by a masked police officer, causing him to fall and hit his head.

With eyewitness accounts indicating that this was only the last of three separate assaults on Tomlinson by police over a 90-minute period, Peter Smyth from the Police Federation questioned the “impartiality” of IPCC head Nick Hardwick.

After days of stalling, Hardwick and the IPCC had finally been pressed into action by the deluge of evidence showing indiscriminate police violence during the protests. At the weekend, Hardwick had registered the mildest of criticisms of policing during the G20. He said he had “serious concerns” about the supervision of officers at demonstrations, that it was “unacceptable” for officers to conceal their identification numbers and remarked that police needed to remember that they were “servants, not masters” of the people.

Decrying Hardwick’s “deplorable behaviour”, Smyth said Hardwick had donned “the mantle of witchfinder general” and was guilty of passing “lofty and withering judgment on London’s police officers.”

Earlier, London Mayor and Conservative Party member Boris Johnson had defended the G20 police operation. Johnson, who chairs the Metropolitan Police Authority, said, “The overwhelming majority of people in this city and this country understand the particularly difficult situation they [the police] face when being asked to provide security in a demonstration such as the G20.”

Johnson was speaking alongside Metropolitan Police chief Sir Paul Stephenson, who claimed that police behaviour had to be placed “in context”. While there “have been some concerning images which need to be fully and properly investigated”, Stephenson said, “there needs to be a context here.

“That operation was one of the most complex policing operations that’s ever been undertaken—protecting multiple heads of state,” Stephenson stated, adding that it had also kept the public “largely safe” and prevented damage.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Sir Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), said there was a need to approach the issue of policing “objectively and look at the issue from all perspectives.”

“I can’t find any other country that doesn’t use water cannon, CS gas, rubber bullets. Our approach is proportionate and, in fact, has delivered on many other occasions.”

“What I am saying is that the world is changing,” Jones continued. “The way that some people come to these protests now, particularly in Europe, and offer violence to people, to property, to other legitimate protesters, and, yes, they came to attack the police, this has become an increasingly difficult job for us to pull off.”

Home Office Minister Lord West concurred. British police tactics were better than “water cannon, baton rounds or shooting people—all of which seem to occur in some other countries,” he said.

“I am very proud of them [the police] and the way I approach it generally is they are on our side and they are our people.”

Separately, Paul McKeever, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, complained of an anti-police “bandwagon” surrounding the G20 protests. Officers had faced “real provocation” during the demonstrations, he claimed.
Contempt for democratic rights

Such statements are testimony to the contempt for democratic rights within the political establishment and state.

The comments by West and Jones over policing in “other countries” are disingenuous, especially given the police killing of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005. It was only after de Menezes was gunned down in full public view that it emerged the police had secretly adopted a shoot-to-kill policy under the guise of the “war on terror” some two years before. Police are also equipped with tasers and CS gas. Nor should it be forgotten that water cannon, CS gas and rubber bullets have all been deployed for decades in Northern Ireland.

More fundamentally, Jones’s accusation that protests are invariably aimed at “violence to people, to property” and to the police points to the degree to which political dissent is now officially regarded as criminal behaviour. Such is the degree of social polarisation, and the resulting political alienation, that any activity that questions the existing set-up is considered a threat, which should be responded to with force.

It was this, not Johnson’s claim of concerns for public safety that guided police operations during the protests. Forcible containment for hours at a time, beatings and the use of plain-clothes and masked, unidentifiable officers were intended to intimidate and punish those joining the demonstrations.

Nor is this confined to the G20 protests. Only days later, police carried out the unprecedented pre-emptive arrests of 114 people in Nottingham on “suspicion” that they had been planning an environmental protest.

Yet McKeever suggests in his comments that concerns over the implication of these unprecedented developments for civil liberties are bogus, illegitimate and part, presumably, of a left-wing inspired anti-police bandwagon.

Nobody should be deceived into believing that the public outcry over the police assaults on peaceful protesters will produce any let-up in the undermining of democratic rights. On the contrary, the statements by Johnson and senior police chiefs indicate that the representatives of the state apparatus intend to press ahead regardless.

They are encouraged in this by the perfidy of what passes for the official “workers” movement and Britain’s nominally liberal elite.

Not a single leading member of the Labour Party or the trade unions has registered any public criticism of the police’s actions. It could not be otherwise, given that Labour has blazed the trail for the adoption of methods more akin to a police state as an integral part of its big business agenda.

The trade union bureaucracy may, on the odd occasion, shout about defending the “rights of British workers”. But this is only when such protestations serve the reactionary purpose of dividing the working class—as in the recent “Britons first” campaign. When it concerns protecting these rights against the state, however, there is silence.

A recent comment by Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty (formerly the National Council for Civil Liberties) in the Times newspaper, was noteworthy only for the extent to which she accepted the restricting of fundamental rights.

“The right to protest is precious but not unlimited,” she asserted, claiming that “[F]ew would argue against proportionate interferences with that right to protect people and property.”

“The use of force—when it is proportionate and necessary to make arrests and prevent harm to the police and public—can be reasonable,” she continued.

“But it is neither lawful nor productive to use violence against an individual protester, however annoying they are, because other people are misbehaving or an officer has lost his rag. As for the tactic of uniformed officers obscuring their identity numbers, the commissioner has clarified that this is unacceptable,” she went on lamely.

“The G20 demonstrations may prove a momentous moment in Britain’s surveillance culture”, she continued tritely, from which “we might all learn”. Video footage showing the police in action meant that they “will understand how it feels to be watched and the dangers of rushing from snatched images to judgement. We complainers are reminded that well-targeted surveillance has its place and that the right to privacy, like protest, is not unlimited.”

Julie Hyland
- Homepage: http://www.wsws.org

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

I'm amazed that the right-wing press have criticised the police so much

25.04.2009 00:48

What I have found very surprising is the extent to which the right wing press like the Sun and the Daily Mail have criticised the police and publicised police brutality.

I would have expected them to cover it up and be very pro-police.

I wonder why this was?

anon


One explanation

25.04.2009 09:03

Perhaps the right wing tabs are scolding the filth for having been stupid enough to let themselves get caught on camera? The tabs would probably endorse those beatings and the overall thuggery of the filth, but would rather not want it to be made public. Now the tabs must bay for blood louder than all the rest as a form of defence. Reminiscent of Lady Macbeth, I'd say. Let's face it - the tabs don't really give a shit about the welfare of protesters. Aren't they the ones which routinely defame the protesters with the smear campaigns directed by the filth? There's no love lost there, so it will be for other reasons that the tabs are now chastising the filth - presumably to distance themselves from the shit splatter.

Dastardly Dan


Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech