LCI: Mansfield demo to proceed

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Bring your Labour Party and Trade Labour rarty Ivunonui Agent assurea inar memuers uf tre . int recuru uj Lumuraun David Hughes sent the West • Labour Committee on without being subjected to Midlands Regional Organiser Ireland have no intention of threats of violent attack. Concannon «The Labour Committee on Ireland intends to hold a public demonstration in Mansfield on Saturday 4 July to protest at our Party's collaboration with the Tories on Ireland.

Recent political pronouncements of Mr Concannon show that he feels entitled to visit constituencies other than his own and to declare publicy that as Labour's " spokesman he stands foursquare behind the Tory, Mrs Thatcher, on Northern Ireland.

Same rights

Obviously other members of the Labour Party enjoy the same democratic rights and therefore we feel entitled to visit other constituencies (including Mr Concannon's) to declare publicly that we do not back Mrs Thatcher's policies on Ireland nor Mr Concannon's record.

Contrary to local press reports which have described our demonstration as an "IRA march" , membership of the LCI is restricted to individual members of the This demonstration is merely a marginal activity compared with the main thrust of our campaign which has been to promote debate on the question of Ireland within the democratic machinery of the Challenge It is precisely our success in developing a challenge within the Party which has led to the orchestrated hysterical response to our It does not surprise us that support for a counter-demonstration has come not only from Concannon's cohorts in the Labour farty, but also Tories, the local Rugby Club and NF ele"No good general ever discloses his forces as prelude to any kind of He admitted that in one month-long operation Brixton in 1978, 120 SFG officers had set up roadblocks and stopped 1,000 people:

It was subsequently disclosed that though only 100 of these 1,000 victims were charged with any oftence, all of their names and addresses have been kept on police files.

Detective Chief Superintendant Plowman admitted that the 'Operation Swamp 81' exercise, which helped spark off the Brixton rots, had been aimed primarily at harassing blacks.

He claimed. that the majority •of- 'footpad robberies" were committed by.black:xoutk.aged 12.17.

"I would expect my officers to be looking at ments.

The threat of violence from these groups has been used by the police to ban us from marching through the town centre-a ban which we find an unacceptable infringement of our demo cratic rights.

The Chief Executive of Mansfield District Council has also been pressurised to refuse us an assembly point.

For our part we challenge Don Concannon MP to debate with us at the end of the demonstration.

We call on all Labour Party members to join us in this demonstration to criticise Mr Concannon's disastrous record on Ireland and his attempts to suppress our legitimate protest against his collaboration with the Tories."

*It is reported that the Dave, Alatianal A moust black youths lounging about on street corners and giving rise to the suspicion of involvement in these crimes" , he said.

Rastafarians in particular, it seems, annoy Chief Supt. Plowman. . He described Railton Road-at the centre of the riot area-as a "squalid " area"' where "Rastafarians with an antiauthority attitude gathered."

Yet he went on to claim that nobody but "criminals" would have noticed: that Operation Swamp 81 was taking place.

Having admitted that the entire operation. was focussed on arresting black youth, Plowman then attempted to deny discrimination:

don't go around Brixton discriminating against black people and t don't expect my officers to do so either."

But he went on Lab to see the West Midlands organiser of the LCI to try and persuade her to call off the demonstration.

He told her that if the march went ahead the Labour Party faced the prospect of seeing its members fighting each other in the Socialist Press has been 1 - Land mashrun of tho again that:

"a vast majority of these crimes are committed by black people." "

The "anti-authority attitude". which Plowman finds so unacceptable among black: youth, however, is readily tolerated when it is a question of plain clothes police touting unauthorised weapons.

Two journalists told the inquiry that men behind police lines were seen carrying weapons. Caroline Tisdall spoke of two men carrying iron bars, and BBC corres: pondent John Clare described three men carrying both police shields and assorted weapons-an axe hardle, a wooden stave and a two foot length of rubber; piping.

Plainly, sections af the police have drawn their own lessons from the Blair Peach.. murder in Southall and our Committee on Ire Sack Concannon!

Break Bipartisanship! ›port the Hunger Strik SATURDAY 4 JULY Assemble 2.00 p.m.

Mansfield BR Station your Labour Party and Union banners Brixton the morning after the riots initiating any violence on the 4 July demonstration.

It would therefore seem more appropriate for the Labour Party's West Midlands Regional Organiser to pay a visit to Mr Concannon and his supporters and tell them that they must respect the democratic rights of those who wish to oppose • recora of Concanno equipped themselves with suitably unorthodox implements with which to club youth on the streets.

The Scarman inquiry itself can be nothing more than .. a . travesty which excludes in advance any. serious investigation of why the anger of a whole carmunity-black and whitesuddenly erupted.

It is boycotted by a long list of local labour movement bodies, and functioning primarily as a whitewash exercise for the police.

But the ineptitude and transparent racialism of the police witnesses and the small amount of impartial evidence so far produced underlines the necessity for a full labour movement inquiry into the police action and into tha ste workers" movement m take to protect the blow community from fuiti ar harassment and viol