BBC Leeds Protest 4 April - Riot vans... arrests?

It has been a similar experience in Manchester. All of the anti-war demos I have been on have been peaceful. There have been sit downs, of course, often outside BBC Manchester, but they have been peaceful as well--following the pattern of non-violent direct action used by pacifist protesters over past decades. The police response has been one of overkill and has been heavy-handed. We have had the TAU--Tactical Aid Unit--out in force, fully kitted up. This is Manchester's version of the old Special Patrol Group--the riot police. The police reaction has been out of all proportion to what has been happening on the streets and is clearly designed to try and intimidate the demonstrators, It won't deter the more determined people, but the objective is clearly to try and frighten newly active people who have not been on protest actions before.

The police have routinely encircled protestors for 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour or more. While being prevented from moving in any direction, the police ostentatiously start to video them. These tactics are pure intimidation and a violation of basic human rights. It is pathetic macho-posturing.

The anti-war movement must monitor and publicly expose these police methods. This can best be done by videoing the police as they use this type of intimidation on demonstrations and protests. I always take a video camara with me on demos and protests for this purpose. Digital video can be easily transferred to a computer and uploaded to the Internet where the whole world can see what is happening. I strongly urge all anti-war groups to invest in a digital video camara. They are coming down in price--you can get one for around £400--£500 or cheaper if you shop around on the Web.

Being videoed by the police can be an unnerving experience for some people--especially if they are newly active young people. One response is to video the police videoers--it does actually wipe the smirk off their faces as you stand there poiting a camera back at them.

If you video any serious injustices and violations of human rights by the police, you can also send copies of your video to human rights organisations like WITNESS:

 http://www.witness.org

This is a New York based global human rights organisation which will actually loan video cameras to people any where in the world who agree to act as their "partners" monitoring human rights violations. They even provide training.

Monitoring and videoing the police won't stop them from carrying out their intimidatory tactics--they are far to arrogant for that. But it will mean that they, and their political "handlers", will pay a political price for their thuggish methods. In the meantime, the anti-war movement needs to learn the lessons of these experiences.

The anti-war movement needs to go beyond the tactics of non-violent direct action because it is extremely limited in what it can achieve--as we are seeing. Recent weeks have shown that peaceful protest comes up slap bang against the brick wall of Thatcher's militarised police: that is, a militarised gang of thugs armed with clubs and other weapons.

The police are highly mobile with vans and motor cycles. They were able to get to wherever the road blockades were happening quickly, with a lot people, to prevent them in some cases. The anti-war movement needs to be highly mobile also. It needs vans and motor cycles too in order to be able to out maneouvre the police. In a word: the anti-war movement need to be even better organised than the police and it also need to be able to defend itself.

The police are trained in martial arts, crowd and riot control, and manhandling people. Thatcher, faced by miners flying pickets, militarised the police to defeat them in the 80s. The riot police/Special Patrol Group were formed based on the French CRS. The trades unions and the anti-war movement have so far not risen to this challenge by organising themselves to defend themselves and defeat these methods.

The unions and anti-war/racist movement need to study the art of self defence and the martial arts. It needs to train fit young people to act as stewards to defend demonstrations against police attacks. Instead of meekly submitting to "penning in" tactics, it needs to organise groups of physically strong stewards to punch their way through police encirclements and thus allow demonstrations to continue. And when the police use snatch squads to grab people, it needs to have its own snatch squads to grab them back. The police have got to be beaten at their own game and their faces need to be occasionally "acquainted with the pavement" in order to drive home the point that we will not be intimidated and penned in like cattle.

The BNP is very dangerous--especially in the North West. Racist attacks are soaring in places like Oldham and Burnley. At the moment they are not attacking the unions the left or the anti-war movement. They are trying to appear "respectable" while quietly inciting the local white population to attack the Asian population. Hitler also used elections--he was elected to power democratically--remember? When the BNP gets strong enough it will turn on the unions, the left and the anti-war movement with a vengeance and become tha auxilliary paramilitary thugs supporting the police.

The anti-racist movement also needs to organise to defend itself. The Asian youth movements of the 1970s need to be re-established and mobilised to defend themselves with the active support and participation of white anti-racists.

In the late 1940s, a group of British Jewish ex-service men and women, having spent the war fighting Hitler, discovered that there was a dangerous revival of the Mosleyite Nazis in Britain. Having just witnessed the holocaust, they were outraged and immediately organised themselves into a determined, disciplined military force to smash Mosleyism once and for all. And they succeeded. They were known as the "43 Group" because that is the number of people they started out with. Because they had been in the armed forces during the war, they were used to acting in a highly organised, co-ordinated disciplined way. They grew rapidly and basically wiped the floor with the Mosleyites. They invaded Mosley's meetings and broke them up. No quarter was asked or given. They were utterly ruthless. The fascists were literally beaten up and smashed as a political movement in matter of a couple of years. There is a book that records the exploits of this movement: "The 43 group" by Morris Beckman:

 http://www.anl.org.uk/merchandise.htm

Of course, the BNP needs to be politically isolated as well as physically suppressed, but it cannot be beaten purely through non-violent political methods. A combination of both political isolation and physical suppression is necessary and the balance between them will vary according to circumstances. And the use of physical force needs to be closely matched to the actual need for self-defence--we are not talking about pointless or counter-productive violence for its own sake.

In the past the ANL has concentrated on politically isolating the BNP while groups like Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) have concentrated on physically suppressing the fascists. The founders of AFA, Red Action, were a tendency of young people expelled from the SWP in the late 70s. This was a big mistake on the part of the SWP. The BNP can only be defeated by intelligently combining political and physical methods. The unions, the left, the anti-racist movement, the anti-war movement need to encourage the formation of groups of young people who are prepared to take the initiative in terms of defending these movements from attack by the police and BNP.

The idea of using physical force does not come easily to some in the anti-war movement who rightly hate violence. However, if an elderly woman were being attacked by a young thug, many would consider it right and proper to intervene, to physically defend the woman and forcefully restrain the attacker. A surgeon employs violence to patients on a daily basis for the entirely constructive purpose of saving lives. In the same spirit, it is necessary for the anti-war and anti-racist movement to go beyond the methods of non-violent direct action to rise to the challenge of Thatcher's militarised police and the menace of the BNP.

Some people would be all to willing to defend others from the police brutality shown in manchester if it wasn't for the fact there would be no backup from others.
One person cannot really pull off any decent attack on a copper backed by 100's of others.
Another thing to consider is what kind of sentencing can be expected as well as treatment likely to be recieved in a police cell. It's pretty safe to assume you won't be getting released on police bail.
As long as people want to see a group formed by other people it will never happen, you have to get involved yourself. Besides, defending yourself from police brutality will look better in court than defending others.

right, so for future reference if i want the police to actually come out- for example, when i'm witnessing a crime- all i have to do is stand by the side of the road and they will come to me? all this time i have been trying to call them on the telephone, and they have just beenc alling back 5 minuets later asking if i wouldn't mind if they stopped round in the morning instead? ya, i'm sure the vandals and muggers will be willing to wait. i'll loan them some blankets so they can sleep out my front steps.

Don't forget that if you are filmed by police you are entitled to a copy of the video from them. Just write to the headquarters of GMP with all the details. If they got hundreds of these requests it might just make em stop and think aboput it.