Police War on Socialists

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Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for the year 1976. HMSO Cmnd 6821. By a guest reviewer.

Every socialist and trade union militant should be aware of the contents of this fascinating new report.

Sir Robert Mark in his five years as Commissioner of the London Police has steered his organisation through some difficult and corrupt times towards becoming a more political, more anti-trade union, more anti-socialist force.

The report reeks of bitter hatred for socialists and strikers; almost all comment is devoted to these, while actual crime is reduced to piles of bare statistics.

This is not surprising in view of the levels of crime within the force over which Mark presided. Most obviously, the Chief of the "Porn Squad" has been convicted of helping resell pornography and the Chief of the Drug Squad of protecting the importation of drugs into Britain.

Mark is very clear on the direction his and future efforts have to take-combatting working class resistance to falling living standards.

"Unrest arising from economic problems at home and changes in the political scene abroad continued to create problems for the police...

The report devotes 14 pages to 'Public Order' compared to 15 prattic?" 'Crime' and 11 on It is in the section on Public Order where Mark makes his stand most clear. He outlines the various marches against the brutal oppression by the British Army in Northern Ireland, and goes on to claim:

. the continuing violence against British soldiers in the province increases the possibility of a backlash by anti-Irish elements in London."

The only such backlash he reports comes from a small National Front demonstration.

On the Southall demonstrations last year following the murder of Gurdip Singh Chagger-which according to Mark was not a 'racist' killing-he has this to say:

"This racial unrest was stimul ated and manipulated for their own ends by extremist elements including the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group."

VICTIM

Mark goes on to paint the picture of the National Front as the helpless victim of extreme forces:

"The activities of left wing extremists against the National Front racialism continued throughout the year."

Indeed the racialism of the National Front is minimised Mark's account:

"On 26 September the NF mounted a picket outside a disused warehouse in Lea Bridge Road, Leyton, which was being used as a mosque by the local Moslem community. This action provoked the usual reaction the left by wing extremists...

Mark Flying in the face of all the findings of the large scale enquiry carried out last year by Brent Trades Council, Mark claims that on the 'Right to Work' march run by the International Socialists-in which marchers were arbitrarily "Police powers are being dangerously widened. It might start in the black community but it will soon spill over into the whole community"

This was how Althea Lecointe introduced the workers' enquiry Police wade into Trico pick: