Civil liberties, justice, crime

A jury inquest into the death of newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson is finally underway, two years after he was killed during the G20 demonstrations in London. A criminal enquiry previously ruled that Tomlinson died of natural causes. It did not press charges against the cop who, in amateur video footage from the scene, was clearly seen striking Tomlinson. However, the primary pathologist in the case (Dr Freddy Patel) was later suspended for “deficient professional performance” in other, unrelated, cases, bringing his judgement in the Tomlinson case into doubt. The inquest will cover the role of...

Last week I was arrested and charged for confronting a group of people who were sieg-heiling and using racist language towards a group of friends and anti-cuts students. Their behaviour included telling an Asian and a mixed-race woman to “look in the mirror to see how inferior you are”. The police turned up at the altercation. They were uninterested in the racism and abuse, and instead pushed a Jewish woman in our group who was remonstrating with the police about doing nothing. The man responsible for most of the abuse was told to “move along”. I raised my voice in a futile attempt to make the...

A government review has recommended that police overtime and other payments above basic wages be cut, and that 28,000 jobs be cut from police and back-up staff. Paul McKeever, chair of the Police Federation, reckons that “with the two-year pay freeze and a likely increase in pension contributions... police officers are likely to suffer a 15-20% reduction in the value of their pay”. Although last October the Government spoke of giving police the right to strike, and in 2008 the Police Federation decided by a large ballot majority to demand the right to strike, at present the cops have no such...

I don’t believe in custodial sentences for many offences, including the one for Tommy Sheridan ( Solidarity 3/192). However I am getting the feeling Solidarity believes the courts have no rights here. I disagree. The argument that because the judicial system has biases and prejudices we do not use it is as ridiculous as saying that because democracy in this society is limited flawed and biased we shouldn’t vote. Many issues are pursued through the courts however imperfect, that actually give people a right of redress to what may have happened to them. There has to be, for instance, some...

A small Twitter storm recently erupted over potential demonstrations by the police against job cuts, and whether the left anti-cuts movement should join in. There seems to be some confusion going on, and some outright naivety. People can refer to police strikes of 1918-19, and state that revolutionaries need to win over cops (probably true). But this is not a revolutionary situation, or even close. It’s not a case of police beginning to join in with a serious class struggle, who need to be won over to our cause to stop them from shooting us. It’s not even a serious attempt at self-organisation...

Activists taking part in a peaceful UK Uncut protest at a Boots store on 30 January in central London were attacked by police using CS spray. Three protesters were hospitalised and others were still feeling the effects hours later. Anyone who thought the police had calmed down or softened up after their relatively laid-back showing at the London protest on Saturday 29 January will have been given an unpleasant shock by their attack on the UK Uncut action the next day. And, while the Met were handing out glossy leaflets telling marcher they were there to facilitate our “right to protest”, our...

As the police attempt to round up and arrest activists involved in the student revolt (codenamed “Operation Malone”) continues, so must the campaign of the movement to resist police brutality and state clampdowns on dissent. The Right To Resist campaign, which AWL helped initiate, has produced a handy wallet-sized handbook containing useful tips on police tactics and what to do if you're detained. With legal advice from the Green and Black Cross project, the handbook could become an essential tool for protesters. Right To Resist is seeking support from union branches and other labour movement...

I was sitting in a room, in a small Nottingham school. I should think the curtains were closed and the lights on. I was surrounded by people discussing what up to that moment had been a top secret plan to take over Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal fired power station. I had not been party to the plan before this point, but had been invited along because of my involvement in Workers Climate Action by a close fellow activist. I was wondering why I had come. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with the sentiment: closing down a coal fired power station for a week to save 150,000 tonnes of CO2. It wasn’t even...

Click here to download pdf. Workers' Liberty 14 Reviews section The real history of US labour (Dianne Finger and Barry Finger review a book by Kim Moody) It takes all sorts? (Liz Millward reviews a book on the Krays) As modest as Stalin (Jim Denham reviews Jon Halliday's biography of Enver Hoxha) Helter skelter and stage by stage (Martin Thomas reviews books by Ken Livingstone and Seumas Milne Marxism without bullshit? (Jon Pike reviews a handbook of "analytical Marxism" by Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene) "I have made enough voices" (Lilian Thomson writes on Greta Garbo)

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