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attack-officially. But his heart done for a series of burglaries since then? something to do with the four purely to divert attention from into the police would be a start fractured ribs he received in the teal issues and amount to as it would begin to raise the between his arrest and being little more than giving Hitler a central questions within the There is also the question of tration comp. custody, of which it is yery to be a Parliamentary enquiry socialist alternative to the bourOn average four people a day the Kelly case.

through the ridiculous Such an enquiry can do charade of filing official com- nothing and will lead nowhere. plaints against the police for The Labour Party's hypocrisy assault. on the whole question stands Tht total lack of police condemned in the person of accountability is shown by the Harold Wilson, posing smugly fact that last year the Police with the relations of Jimmy Complaints Board heard over Kelly w hilst musing on his own 13,000 cases of various kinds. tecord of using the police to In only 15 did they recommend smash up workers struggles.

The present "Operation Trades Council conference. where up to 70 Metropolitan a one off thing. Any death at pillars of society are implicated the hands of the forces of the in running a "firm" involved in state is a political murder. robbery, fraud and appropria The last TUC conference Three years ago the entire tion tion calling for the disbanding night-shift of a police sub- of the SPG; but what has the division in Northumbria was TUC actually done about it The ever-increasing political pretentions of police chiefs were outlined in issue 157 of Socialist Press ("Keep off the But such ultra-right wing leadership is bound to give full licence to the most vicious and backward among the police rank and file, men and women who are already by definition the most effectively brainwashed and least class-conscious of all workers.

In recent weeks the case of Jimmy Kelly, battered to death by Merseyside police, has crystallised many of the central issues.

Last week an extremely important development took place when Liverpool Trades Council decided to organise a conference on the Kelly murder and numerous other allegations of brutality against the Merseyside police.

"Neutrals"

The importance of this intia tive is that it gives a lead to a labour movement investigation of the police at a time when these noble blue-uniformed "neutrals" are being prepared to spearhead direct physical assaults on workers through the anti-union laws.

But no enquiry or conference can possibly succeed by concentrating on one particular incident or one particular aspect of the role of the police.

• Jimmy Kelly was beaten and kicked to death in front of several witnesses who saw what happened from windows overlooking the waste-ground where the police "arrested' him.

None of the witnesses were asked to give evidence to the police "inquiry"

In November 1978 Jimmy McGeowan was brutally battered to death in a Glasgow police station. An eye-witness account by a young recruit implicating the duty sergeant was ignored.

Probably the best known case in recent years was that of Liddel Towers, a Geordie who died in hospital having never recovered from internal injuries inflicted during his arrest and questioning.

The coroner's verdict was the astounding "justifiable homicide"

Mind you, Towers was a fit and healthy sportsman; not like Norman Barr from Barrow, whom police were informed was suffering from a fatal disease when he was arrested. Barr was shaken and slapped so severely that he died.

Scot His brother is now serving two years after assaulting the policeman who killęd his brother. That policeman is still walking scot free.

Such cases must be seen in conjunction with the record of the SPG in recent years, whose clubbing to death of Blair Peach was an openly political killing, and the shadowy "riot squad" -the bunch of professional goons used to smash up prison riots (such as the one at Wormwood Scrubs last year when over 30 prisoners were hospitalised).

In addition, lurking beneath the more publicised incidents are many more examples of direct brutality or vicious negligence.

For instance, we are constantly told that the home is attack might just have had the most common place of accidental death. Not true. Proportionately many more people die of "accidental causes" in a taken to hospital. police station than in the home:

And since most home acci- deaths after release from dents involve poisoning, fire and asphyxiation, which are not difficult to compile figures. normally sources of danger in move welcomed by the custody, serious questions must be raised about the accuracy of Cryer who have agitated around such coroner's verdicts.

Another statistical let-out is the 'open verdict'-in other words the police cannot produce sufficient evidence about how someone died in their own custody.

There were fifteen such incidents recorded between January 1970 and June 1979 alone. In the same period a total of 62 people suffered disciplinary action! "death by misadventure" Occasionally the police usually hypothermia or suffoca- force, for the sake of appearting in their own vomit. ances, purges its most openly corrupt members.

"Natural causes"

Countryman" is one example, Many more deaths in police custody are ascribed to "natural causes"

One such was Ronald Blair, arrested by Gateshead police tion of stolen property. (those involved in the Towers murder) early in 1979.

Blair died from heart in the form of workers' defence squads.

The formation of such squads must be seen as very much on the agenda in the coming period.

Thatcher government has shown in its immediate granting of huge pay rises for the police and army what tactics it will resort to when the major confrontation with the working class occurs.

And the question of which™ side of the barricades the Labour Party and trade union Tandors will ho an is diven a rlear ICQUEIS WIE DE VI DO BIrUN a VIVAL answer in the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, introduced under Labour and now a major weapon in the state's armoury 4,350 arrests have now been made under the PTA in five years (leading to a total of only 46 charges actually under the Act).

To the reformists and the civil liberties lobby there is no connection between the detention of a working class Catholic youth and the murder of Jimmy Kelly.

State But such mass arrests and such murders are not isolated "excesses"; they are the direct consequence of the bourgeois state's use of trained and armed bands of men and women to defend capitalism in all its forms.

At the moment in Britain the police force is simply showing that it has the utmost ruthlessness and that it is a law unto itself.

It also has the necessary conscious political leadership within its own ranks. In this context the liberal reformist cry for greater accountability is sim ply dangerous naivety.

We fight for the democratic demand of full accountability only as a means of raising the political questions involved.

Starting with the SPG Stration with the CDr. the entire police machine must be Such pantomimes are staged A national workers' inquiry disbanded and replaced by workers' defence squads.

The building of such squads can, only proceed from the struggle to link up battles on Moreover it is from the jobs, wages and the cuts through the councils of action.

50:3 .%:" WOMAN Women's paper of th Leagur WORKER Articles on:

*Chile •Textile:

Political murder We in the Workers Socialist *Meccano League support the Liverpool But such an event cannot be *NUPE and the cuts overwhelminety carried a resolu1, price 15p including postage.

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NDUSTR'1 MET spark speaks system.

Palmer even suggested that the members refuse to fight for a pay increase unless it has the PRU seal of approval! Would you give Socialist Press some details of your victimisation at Vosper S.R. in Southampton? 1n0 1980 Yes. How have they pursued this attack on the workforce?

Well, as expected, 'VAB' has