Since this summer's youth rebellion the role of the police has come under increasing public scrutiny. Shelley Charlesworth spoke to Tony Bunyan, author of The Political Police in Britain, about the changing role of the police today.
SC: Recently Stuart Hall wrote in New Socialist that the response of the left to the 'riots' led him to doubt if they had fully grasped the depth and seriousness of what had happened. Do you agree and how do you evaluate the long term impact of the 'riots' on policing methods?
TB: I don't think Stuart Hall is alone in thinking that. It has been true for a long time that questions of policing, the state and the security services have not been central issues within the labour movement or within the extra-parliamentary left, except in the most simplistic terms. What we saw with the 'riots' is another aspect of the long term neglect by the left in general of the situation in the inner city ghettoes which have large black communities. A neglect not just of policing but especially of racism. What we saw in April and July of this year was a qualitative change in British policing — the culmination of police planning over the whole of the 1970s, What was really significant was not the reaction of the police but the kids on the streets telling us [illegible] heavy handed methods.
SC: What do you think will be the policing response over the coming years?
TB: I think that you have to see the police in the context of society as a whole, and in terms of the role of the state. The traditional options of the past are no longer available. Today there is no way in which the government can buy its way out of unemployment or form the social conditions in which people have to live. There is only one remaining option, which is not just the consequence of a Tory government — the seeds have been there since the 1964 Labour government. The only option left is to give the police more powers, sanction new practices like driving vans or cars at high speeds at rioters and by giving them new equipments like CS gas or plastic bullets. The old methods are finished and however liberal Scarman may seem when he reports it is already quite clear the direction in which policing is going. Just look at the equipment they are beginning to receive and bring over from Northern Ireland. Consider the tactics they are already employing in London and other cities where they are creating special 'third force' type units on permanent standby.
SC: Some sections of the socialist movement have advanced 'community policing' as the answer — that is you have a police force on the streets which is answerable to locally elected representatives. This, for example, will limit and solve the problem of racism within the police. What is your opinion of 'community policing'?
TB: 'Community policing' has a very specific meaning. The original ideology of the police from 1829, was that every police officer had a community relations role. They all serve the community. In the 1950s special community relations branches were created to deal with the problem of young people because of truancy and vandalism. In the early 1960s they added the 'problem' of the black community and particularly young black people. They too were singled out for special attention. Now that has been extended to whole communities in what they call the 'high crime' areas — the inner city ghettoes. To understand the 'community police officer' we have to look at the ideology behind it. They are really there to spy on the community. We are not living in the time of Dixon of Dock Green, the friendly bobby on a bicycle who chats to everybody and helps old people accross the road. What we are talking about, in the words of John Alderson, is pro-active policing. What he advocates is that instead of policing by strength of numbers on the streets, which he considers wasteful of manpower, you have to find a way to use his words of 'penetrating the community', This is a direct quote from a speech at a Ditchley Foundation Conference which was later translated into a Home Office circular to all police forces.
Brixton Station
The old station sergeant has gone and been replaced by the police collator. Now what comes in off the beat is called 'intelligence'. It is part of their training to learn how to build up a picture of who lives in the locality, what they do, who knows who, and who is up to what. It is a system that only involves a limited number of officers. Of course they are very keen to operate this system in the inner city ghettoes where they have been having trouble with 'rioters'. People who call for community policing fail to understand how sophisticated the police have become in terms of their ideology and technology. What Alderson, and others, now mean by community policing is not just having more police on the beat but incorporating other social and welfare agencies, like the probation officers, education authorities and social workers. Today in many police forces there are committees, established by the police, on which the local authorities, who control the community and social work programmes sit down with the police to determine how to collectively police their local communities. What is happening is that all the agencies of the state are being brought together to control our inner city ghettoes. This has been a tendency over the last decade which is now being formalised.
SC: You said earlier that you cannot analyse the police outside of a more general analysis of capitalist society. I would agree with that, but if we were to see a heavier police presence on the streets with CS gas and armoured cars, what does that imply for the type of democracy we now have?
TB: We have to recognise the extent of our economic decline, What we are now heading for is a situation in which about five million people are going to be consigned to permanent unemployment and the bulk of these will be living in the city ghettoes. Britain is unable to cushion this situation by generous benefits or welfare handouts because it is one of the poorest economies in the western world. At the same time over the past four years we have been witnessing a gathering attack on the political rights of working people — the right to strike, to demonstrate, to picket, the rights of black people, who are already second class citizens, to stay in this country. If you combine the situation of economic decline with these political parameters whether that be around 'rioters' or 'subversives', the state in Britain is faced with an unprecedented challenge to its authority. At the legal level it is planning to meet that by passing laws, which will be coming before the next parliament, giving the police new powers — seeking to legitimise police practices and to delegitimise militants. What we are seeing at the moment is a fundamental attack on very basic political rights, albeit as they are defined in liberal democratic terms, To express this very simply it means we are moving away from the period of liberal democracy, as we have known it from the 1920s, when all working class men and women were finally given the vote, to that of an authoritarian democracy, one feature of which is that the police become accountable to the state and the government rather than to the people who they are meant to serve.
SC: I would like to return to the police and ask you what you think, in the light of your analysis, the left can and ought to be doing about the problem of policing? We have seen a lot of Labour councillors becoming involved in their local police authorities. Do you think these struggles are important? Or are they ultimately a diversion which the left should not be involved in?
TB: I do not think it is a diversion to be concerned with trying to make the police accountable to the people. This was the original ethos of the police. They purported to serve everyone without regard to their colour, creed or class. What we witnessed in the July 'riots' is that the police do not consider themselves accountable to the people. In the end they are there to defend a particular form of society, a very particular form of economic order and a particular ruling class. So we start from a position where the police are responsible to the state and government and not to the people. However much you alter the formal structures, the Police Committees, the Complaints Board, nothing will change on the streets unless, for example, you eliminate racism from within the police force. As to whether these issues are diversionary, socialists cannot absolve themselves from reality — where people are being mown down by police vans, murdered while held in custody, and black people are being attacked and killed by police and fascists alike — by holding out the promise that everything will be all right when capitalism is overthrown.
SC: You have painted a very disquieting picture of the coming years with five million unemployed and more police powers and control over other agencies to contain the 'ghettoes'. What sorts of demands should the left be putting forward to control the police?
TB: I think making demands for certain reforms and to defend political rights is an essential pre-condition of political education for any revolutionary change. We must start from the present situation — from the current level of political consciousness. It is important to defend democratic rights; the right to strike; the right to picket; the right to demonstrate freely; or the right of black people to be protected from fascist attacks and police racism. And furthermore, it is important to see policing and the whole area of the secret state, which is now directed, in an unprecedented way, against the extra-parliamentary left, as major issues for people whether they are inside or outside the Labour Party. These issues must be part of any socialist programme. I would like to add that I think that there is an element within the extra-parliamentary left which sees fighting for civil liberties as reformist. But these are going to be issues in any socialist society and they cannot be left for the future.
SC: I agree with you about the defence of civil liberties. What are the lessons that we should learn from the 'riots'?
TB: In concrete terms we can support calls for local police authorities to control police operations. But this will mean nothing unless at the same time the police as an institution is taken on — as part of a particular kind of state — and the attitude of the police to strikers, pickets and black people is tackled. The kids on the streets in the 'riots' were telling the Labour Party and the 'white left' that they are now taking the defence of their communities into their own hands, and that the message should be seen by socialist organisations as an indication of how far removed they have become from major sections of the working class. A message that the dispossessed peoples of the ghettoes will not accept their lot lying down, one that the left will ignore at its peril, for the seeds of fascism as much as socialism, can grow from such conditions.