You can't avoid le Border

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ronnd the - policing the "line of vellow paint" BECAUSE the police force was imposed on the working class it's always had to sell itself to be accepted. Right from the start the police have done 'good works' for the public. So in between rounds of smashing up Chartist and trade union meetings the Bow St. plods were giving early morning calle to any gent wanting one and running sponsored marathons for disabled people. You can still see them at it: taking thousands of kids to the z00, playing football with the youth of the area' • And the best con yet is the Lancashire police benevolently taking on 100 Yopsters to give them 'a basic training in the preservation of law and order' Its become a problem for the establishment, now that everyone knows the police are there to spy on them, spend millions tapping phones, watching people, keeping computer files and robbing banks.

Restoring and keeping the homely image of smiling, avuncular 'bobbies' becomes difficult when they are being toughened up as part of the recession's new order, killing demonstrators, murdering people in cells and beating up blacks. Tagging on 'community' pseudocops as cosmetic append. ages while the actual policing continues unchanged is an inexpensive solution and it gives the press something to shout about.

Tough for them that it's called 'community policing' _ because policing the community is what it is. Getting to know, finding out what's going on and making sure the state knows where the likely "trouble makers' are.

But there's more to community policing than coppers hanging around street corners causing trouble: it relies on what that apparantly liberal country bumpkin Alderson calls 'inter-agency cooperation'. The constabulary, as the magic social purgative, is consulted on all government matters: it is represented in town planning, education, housing, social services and so on. Community policing is sophisticated and integrated police intervention in government: giving the police a say and possibly a determining say, in what is politically acceptable.

Alderson's community policing is much more dangerous and sinister than the 'hang 'em and flog 'em' merchants like Manchester's Anderton or London's MeNee.

The police on the beat, the community cosmetics are officially fostered for public consumption. The real policing goes on as before: in the CID specialist squads, the SPGs and the Regional Crime Squads.

Sure, community cosmetics doesn't take in the left lexcept possibly the police's unrewarded ambassadors, Militant) but it may help to marginally contain the left message that the police are class oppressors [when directed at sections of the soft left in the Labour Party).

What we've got to be careful of is not letting community policing: 1. Divert attention away from questions about control and priorities. 2. Keep attentions parochial at the neighbourbood level rather than the county and regional policy levels. 4. Keep attention focussed within the boundaries of the non-debate between "community policing' and "conventional policing'. 5. Present a less unacceptable face of policing, and thus legitimating the whole force by proxy.

JOHN BATCHELOR, secretary, Park Ward, Nottingham East CLP. TWO Class Fighter supporters were part of the recent delegation to Belfast from the Labour Committee on Ireland, Glasgow branch. We met representatives from various political parties, Women's Groups, Gay Groups, and Trades Unionists. It is impossible in the space available io give a complete repuri on our discussions. Instead, I'll take up some of the major issues raised.

On the question of partition, there are basically only two positions (as is the case in Britain). There are those who see partition as a good thing, or as irrelevant to the immediate class struggle (The

McLeish

Workers Party, the Northern Ireland Labour Party, the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions) and those who see it as the crucial factor in the struggle for socialism (Sinn Fein, People's Democracy). For example the Northern Irish Labour Party told us:

"The border is not the Berlin Wall. It's just a line of yellow paint on the road.' What they ignore is that this 'line of paint' was imposed on the Irish people against their will and it has created a statelet based on discrimination, denial of democratic rights for olic third of the population (and precious few for the other iwo thirds) and working class.

Irish politics have been so decisively moulded by the existence of partition that the continuing struggle for secialism in Ireland can't confine itself to bread and butter issues, but must overcome partition.

Discrimination

But the Northern Ireland Labour Party believes it can:

"There's no discrimination. The problems of Catholics and Protestants are identical: jobs, housing, etc.

We hope to move forward on these issues, not on the issue of the border.?

Facts show the opposite. In this year's report from the Fair Employment Agency, we find that:

In Harland and Wolfe there is not a single Catholic in a three figure workforce; in shops, between 4½% and 8% of the skilled workforce are Catholics; 90% of the workforce at marquees are Protestants; Sirrocco employs just 4 Catholics out of a total workforce of 250, and so it goes on.?

Dream?

It is hardly surprising then, that living in such a dream world, the NILP's. share of votes has fallen to less than 1%. Hardly moving forward.

The struggle against partition, the struggle against discrimination, and the struggle for genuine workers' unity are, in reality, all one and the same struggle. To separate out the struggle against discrimination from the struggle against partition leads in practice to a challenge to neither. The continuing existence of rampant discrimination in the Northern Statélet today should be proof enough of this - for those willing enough to open their eyes to reality.

For a copy of the delegation report, send 70p to: Glasgow Ich, co Box 5, 488 Great Western Rd., Glasgow.