[Militant No. 695, 13th April 1984 p. 7]
By Lynn Walsh
Up to 8,000 police a day from forty-one out of Britain’s forty-three authorities have been mobilised by the Tory government in the biggest strike-breaking operation since the 1926 general strike.
Going far beyond any previous post-war government, Thatcher is deploying the police, para-military fashion, as a political weapon to carry through pit closures and enforce anti-trade union laws.
The police chiefs claim their strike breaking tactics come within the realm of “operational” decisions. But there is no doubt that the action of the police, which go further than existing legal powers, are the result of a political decision. Police have been deployed all over the country, without any reference to local police committees and with the Home Secretary disclaiming any responsibility.
Miners have been arrested at police road-blocks, under trumped-up “common law” powers, hundreds of miles away from any picket lines. In an attempt to intimidate miners, some of those arrested have been grilled about their political opinions by plain clothes officers. Snatch-squads have been used to arrest pickets, in some cases with the help of undercover provocateurs posing as miners.
“Secondary picketing”, which under Tory laws has merely lost its immunity from civil actions, has been treated by police almost as if it were a capital offence. All the laws customarily used by the police to frustrate picketing – from obstruction to public order offences – are being enforced with a vengeance.
Stop peaceful picketing
The last thing pickets are allowed to do, of course, is “peacefully persuade” miners not to work. Enormous forces have been mobilised to prevent pickets getting anywhere near lorry drivers and coach-loads of still working miners.
For the police chiefs, this operation is an attempt to exact long-awaited, well-prepared revenge for 1972. The success of the flying pickets then, particularly their decisive victory at Saltley gates, sent a shudder of horror through the ruling class. They had come face to face with the irresistible power of the organised workers once they were mobilised.
Prospect of general breakdown
“At the time”, relates one of the Heath government’s top advisers, Brendon Sewill, “many of those in positions of influence looked into the abyss and saw only a few days away the possibility of the country being plunged into a state of chaos … with the prospect of the breakdown of power supplies, food supplies, sewerage, communications, effective government and law and order … it was fear of that abyss which had an important effect on subsequent policy.”
The six-day struggle to close Saltley depot, the biggest coal stock-pile in the country, was the decisive episode in the 1972 strike. Once closed, the crucial blockade of the power stations was clinched.
Every day, more and more pickets battled with police at the gates, gradually cutting down the lorries getting through. Predictably, the police also increased their numbers. Finally, however, West Midlands car and construction workers turned out to reinforce the picket.
Fifteen thousand workers blocked the gates guarded by 800 policemen. Face with this, the Chief Constable, Sir Derrick Capper, withdrew his men and declared the Saltley gates closed.
Afterwards, both he and the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, were bitterly criticised by Tories and businessmen for retreating. However, confrontation – Maudling told his critics – would have meant defeat for the police.
Asked why he had not sent the troops in, Maudling said: “if they had been sent in, should they have gone in with their rifles loaded or unloaded? Either course could have been disastrous.”
Counter mass picketing
Ever since, police have seen their defeat at Saltley as a demon to be exorcised. The need to counter mass picketing has been a major pre-occupation of the police chiefs, generals, and top civil servants who, behind the scenes, have been busily preparing new states of emergency.
After 1972, the government set up a National Security Committee (blandly renamed the Civil Contingencies Committee by the Labour government in 1975) to review all aspects of maintaining the status quo. Its main task has been to plan strike-breaking operations on a massive scale.
This involves plans to minimise the effect of strike action by workers in key sectors of the economy (power and water workers, firemen, etc.) through training military personnel to take over key functions and stock-piling essential supplies (like fuel, food, etc.) at crucial locations. It also means planning massive military or para-military operations to undermine, if not stop mass picketing.
These preparations clearly involved the army. Manoeuvres on the streets of Britain have been justified as “anti-terrorist” operations.
The first line, however, is undoubtedly the police. There has always been strong resistance to the idea of a “third force”, a special riot police like the CRS who have recently been seen in action against striking workers in France. But since the 1972 security review, sections of the police, like the SPG, have been transformed into a para-military force, equipped with fire-arms and riot gear. Other sections of the police, moreover, can rapidly be put onto a para-military footing.
Iron fist
The “iron fist” policy of hard-line police chiefs such as McNee and his Metropolitan replacement, Newman, like Anderton in Manchester and Oxford in Merseyside, is now dominant. Preparing for a reaction against their policy of creating mass unemployment and driving down living standards, the Tory government has pushed up police numbers and massively increased their pay.
Fighting crime is police routine. But the statements of police chiefs leave no doubt that they regard the labour movement as their main enemy.
In remarks later echoed by Anderton, Sir Robert Mark, formerly head of the Met, said in 1977: “I do not think that what we call ‘crimes of violence’ are anything like as severe a threat to the maintenance of tranquillity in this country as the tendency to use violence to achieve political or industrial ends. As far as I am concerned, that is the worst crime in the book. I think it is worse than murder”.
Jobs defence ‘worse than murder’
Of course, to the police chief’s mind, the mobilisation of trade union power in defence of jobs and living standards is “violence”. The closure of pits, the destruction of mining communities, is “tranquillity”. The law, backed up by police power, must be used to limit picketing to six men outside the strikers’ immediate place of work. Meanwhile, MacGregor and other bosses should be allowed, without let or hindrance to starve pits of investment or switch their capital around, at home or abroad, in search of the fattest profits.
The police chiefs have shown that they are well prepared to confront miners’ pickets. They have deployed massive forces across the country completely evading any accountability for their action.
Officers deployed in another county, came under the control of the chief constable there. Later, the police committee of the authority from which they are borrowed will not be able to question their role.
The police are much better prepared than 1972. Nevertheless, it is the political factors which are decisive.
Today, there is still enormous sympathy with the miners. But the divisions within the NUM, the fact that flying pickets have clashed with other miners, have hampered the fight to build up solidarity.
For all their emergency planning, the Tories are not even confident that they could withstand a national strike by any key section of workers, like the power or water workers, or even the miners if they were united.
The capitalists know that they risk being rendered powerless in the face of a general strike, something which could be easily provoked at a certain stage in response to provocative strike-breaking measures by the state. In recent years even military dictatorships like the Shah’s regime in Iran, have been shattered by general-strike action by the working class.
The balance of power in society still lies overwhelmingly on the side of the working class, which has been strengthened in the post-war period. The reserves of the capitalist class, who represent a small minority of wealthy exploiters, have been steadily undermined.
Undoubtedly, the state remains a powerful weapon in their hands, and will be used ruthlessly by the Tories. But the coercive apparatus of the state remains effective only while the working class unconscious of its own power.
Even the apparently powerful forces built up by the Tories in recent years would become a puny instrument in the face of a working class united around clear class aims. The undemocratic arm of the ruling class would crumble in front of a mass working class organisations mobilised in defence of the living standards and democratic rights of the great majority of people.
Buying illusions
Whatever the outcome of the present battle, the eyes of many miners, and other workers too will have been opened. Any illusions that the police are a neutral force committed to upholding impartial justice will be buried forever.
The call for democratic accountability of the police as part of a socialist programme, must be brought to the fore. While the need to defend trade union rights against attack will be rightly uppermost in workers’ minds, the labour movement must renew its demand for trade union rights for the police ranks.
They are now being used as a battering-ram against workers. But history shows that the police will not be left unaffected by workers’ struggles and by the massive radicalisation of British society that is now only in its early stage.
One of the lessons already, is that the role of the state and the need for a socialist policy on the state, must be brought home to the ranks of the labour movement.
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