A dress rehearsal in state repression

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ERNIE STUBBINS reviews a pamphlet on Persons Unknown' case, available from Box 182 Upper Street, London N1, priced 40p.

pamphlet of the court hearings which the judges and court give a vivid picture of the ways officials knowingly connive.

Five of the six 'Persons Unknown' defendants: (I to r) Vince Stevenson, Iris Mills, Ronan Bennett, Trevor Dawton and Dafvad Ladd.

shows the continued determination of the state and the extreme right wing to perfect the apparatus of repression.

The use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act against Time Out joumalist Ron McKay was yet another example.

The Persons Unknown' case has been particularly protracted, and as a result its various phases reflect the ebbs and flows of the process of the state testing its strength.

For this very reason the pamphlet is important material in our study of the apparatus of repression, despite OUr disagreements with the politics of the accused and their supporters.

An important theme developed by the pamphlet is the flimsiness, one could even say the nonexistence, of the evidence on which the accused have been held, for over 16 months.

During most of this time they have been in Brixton prison and for long periods in solitary confinement.

At a series of appearances in court the police hinted at, but never presented, evidence of enormous and deeply laid plans to destroy society.

The magistrates at Lambeth never questioned any of the police's assertions, never asked for any evidence, and complied mechanically with the polic : requests to refuse bail. In contravention of the Bail Act, bail was refused because of the accuseds' political beliefs.

The accounts the in which the basic rights of workers, when tested in court procedures prove not to exist.

There are interesting sections on the security arrangements operated by the police.

These varied from week to week, confirming our belief that the police were using the case to rehearse their techniques. Dafydd Ladd.

Always they involved police firearms, sometimes sub-machine guns, sometimes handguns, sometimes sharpshooters' rifles.

They also involved serious restrictions on the rights of the public to observe the courts at work, and sometimes also the exclusion of the press (the key to the press gallery was 'lost'). Many workers believe in the old saying of justice being seen to be done'.

Filled by police

Anyone who has ever tried to observe an important trial will have found that there are very few places available for the public, and that these few are usually taken up by the police, This is a well tried trick with Those who persisted in attempting to observe the proceedings were subjected to searches, questions and identity checks.

Sometimes they were filmed.

When they finally got into the public gallery they found the view blocked by a line of police.

This same treatment was accorded to the defe nce solicitors. In one instance the police searched one of the solicitors and read all his confidential defence notes!

In reply to complaints magistrate actually praised police for their diligence!

Obviously this kind of interference with legal rights makes nonsense of any concept of 'a fair trial' The high speed armed convoys from Brixton jail to Lambeth courthouse, were an important feature of the hearings.

Clearly these were intended to check and improve co-ordination between the prision authority, the Anti-terrorist Squad, the Traffic Division and the other police the 23, units (including the SPG).

The most recent development in the security surrounding the trials is the announcement that the jury will be vetted—i.e. stected to exclude anyone the police think might be sympathetic to the accused.

This kind of jury-fixing came to light during the ABC trial (where an ex SAS man had been selected as jury foreman), and has been used at least 25 times (as the Attorney General admits since August 1975.

Even here the state appears to be improving its methods, with a new 3-level vetting based on crimina records, Special Branch records (which include political materials) and local police information.

In a particularly hypocritical effort to maintain the fiction of justice, the accused have been offered the chance to vet the jury panel themselves.

This will presumably be of great value to any workers who happen to have private access to the Police National Computer, but of less value to the average victim of the system.

Wave of raids

The pamphlet also has useful material on the wave of raids that surrounded the trial.

These had tWo main purposes. In the first place they. produced a large amount of intelligence.

Diaries and address books were seized, along with notes of meetings, letters, etc. In one raid the police produced a chart of their view of the anarchist movement and its interconnections.

The second purpose was to intimidate the raided households, in an effort to prevent the building of the defence organisation. Dogs and drawn guns were common features of the raids.

An interesting feature of these raids was the participation of German police in at least two of them.

Obviously this marks

further development in police techniques which merits further investigation.

Role of The pamphlet goes on to discuss the role of the media in building a widespread belief in the guilt of the accused.

The development of a close cooperation between the state and the media is briefly traced out.

The material here is not new, although it deserves to be more widely known. It begins with Kitson and Clutterbuck, the 'counter-insurgency' experts, and includes the proposals of the right wing think-tank 'Institute for the Study of Conflict' ideas on black propaganda and press manipulation.

Robert Mark implemented many of these ideas during his reign at Scotland Yard, and McNee is continuing down the same road.

Tailored news

The police are currently attempting to refuse to recognise journalists who do not have police-issued press cards. Recent exposures of BBC procedures also confirm the extent to which official news is tailored to meet the wishes of the police and army.

The defence group sets out to draw some conclusions about its own activities. They have correctly tried to publicise their warnings about the case.

It marks an effort to make anarchism an illegai political belief, and this is a very serious threat not only to the rest of the far left but to basic democratic rights.

They make some justified criticisms of the left's lethargy in relation to the case.

There are criticisms that should be made of the defence campaign however.

Labour movement

In comparison with the ABC and Agee/Hosenball cases there has been an evident failure to propagandise the case in trade union and Labour Party branches with a view to building a campaign in the working class.

This underlies the complaint that 'the left' was more interested in fighting the Nazis than the oppressive moves of the state.

, It is also connected with the second political failure of the campaign-the failure to propagandise the anarchist views of the accused and their defenders in the campaign.

The international campaign to defend the HKS, . for example, for all its weaknesses, involves political debate on policies for Iran.

In the Persons Unknown case, even at the end of the present pamphlet we have no knowledge of the politics of the accused except that they call themselves anarchists.

Experiences

How is it possible for workers to understand the need to defend the anarchists if they will not explain themselves?

There is a brief concluding section in the pamphlet, describing the experiences of the accused while remanded in prison.

Although there is little new here it is a useful brief summary of the conditions imposed upon people who have not even come to trial and yet are often subject to even more barbaric treatment than convicted prisoners.

Socialist Press readers will find the pamphlet informative and, at 40p, good value.

It should be used especially in trade union branches to propagandise about the true nature of the police and the courts, and also to build solidarity with the arrested anarchists now. Tacing a brazen frame-up trial at the Old Bailey.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, H'ednesday October 3, 1979 age

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PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report, Bennett, Trevor Dawton and