Editorial Information

This is a new pamphlet that talks about the policing of the working class movement from the very beginning of the police, and it is the best pamphlet size introduction to the police available today. Written to fill a gap given that thousands of people new to protest and the police have questions that needs answering. The pamphlet does that, using relevant information and analysis whilst ignoring no issues and establishing a framework for further reading.

Police as we know them today originated after the working class movement began to become effective, and it was acknowledged by the ruling class that a new force other than the army was necessary to deal with the conflicts industrial capitalist society generated. Industrial capitalist society itself only shortly predates the working class movement and the police.

The front cover design uses the classic Guernica painting by Picasso and creates a modern day scream against police oppression. Inside articles like ‘It’s Not the Apples – it’s the Rotten Barrel’ tackles the lazy bourgeois idea of the bad police as ‘a bad apple’, the implication being there are good apples. Rather it is the institutional corruption and malpractice which means that the apples are irrelevant and it is the barrel which is rotten and the source of multiple harms.

Thus it is necessary to provide an introduction about the experience of the police as felt by progressive movements throughout history, and this pamphlet provides some international evidence for comparative analysis too. In order to educate, to provide a springboard for further activity and research, and the necessary political understanding which may provide some clarity for people they cannot find elsewhere.

This pamphlet starts the debate the whole movement needs on the law and the police.


Contents include; ‘Police State? The State of the Police’ editorial introduction
‘The Genesis of the Police’. ‘It’s Not the Apples – it’s the Rotten Barrel’. ‘Officer Down’ by Phoenix Class War Council. ‘Come and Wet This Truncheon’ by Dave Douglass


The Class War Classix pamphlet series;
1st in the series was the Introduction to the 1970s political group “Big Flame”.
2nd was the 1924 Presidential Address to the Independent Labour Party conference, “Putting Socialism in to Practice”.
3; “An History of Economic Relationships with Crime” was published in 2009.
4; the Class War ‘Poll Tax Special’ 20th anniversary edition
5; The Anti Fascist special, published in February 2010
6; The Workers’ Committee: An Outline of its Principles and Structure
7; Syndicalism & the Russian Revolution, is not available at present
8; So, You’re out of a job.
9; Policing the Crisis Today, published Mayday 2012.
10; Class War; To Be, or Not To Be – That is the question

Cl@ss War Classix is a new initiative to produce seminal publications of the class war.
You can pay via Paypal at dr_trevorbark @ fastmail. net
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 & 10 can be purchased for £1 each including P & P.Contact Cl@ss War Classix at: 07931 301901