LAST WEEK Nora McCabe's husband Jim came from Belfast to visit Bernie Grant in Tottenham. Jim did not go to get Bernie to 'tone down' his remarks question his attitude to violence, or to find out why this black council leader resented the police. He understood that all very well.
Jim McCabe went to Tottenham to tell the story about the death of his wife Nora. He went to Tottenham to express the sympathy of the nationalist people for the victims of state violence in Britain. There was no sourness. It was not a question of saying: 'you sat back and allowed your army to use such methods of oppression against us, now it's happening to you.' More like a numbing realisation of what the future holds for the people of inner city Britain and a personal knowledge of the heartbreak and tragedy which will accompany it.
Kenneth Newman, head of the metropolitan police, talked to the press the day after the Tottenham riots. Surveying the labryinth of alleys and buildings he remarked: 'Of course it would take an army to completely control this.' During the riot, all the hardware of counter insurgency control developed in the available and on display. But the most important feature of the state's experience in Ireland might be missed - that political control of state violence must be used to achieve a given end.
By political control is not meant the control of politicians. Certainly not local polticians like Bernie Grant or community leaders. But neither the quent stoning in Handsworth had him marked out as a bozo from the start. No, its was the political control of the state. Each new piece of hardware is bought 'for extreme emergencies', is trained with, and paraded around until the right moment occurs for its public launch.
The metropolitan police are estimated to have 15,000 of the 20,000 plastic bullets stockpiled in Britain but they are politically unable to use them at present. Jim McCabe explained to Bernie Grant what they are: More like wood than plastic Four inches long, the same size round as a child's arm ... they weigh about the same as a can of baked beans ... they are fired at 200mph.' Nora McCabe wasn't involved although the police said she was. Only the coincidence of a Canadian TV crew filming in the area provided the evidence which showed the armoured car turning the corner on a street unlittered with the debris that the RUC claimed was being thrown at the time. They filmed the puff of smoke from a plastic bullet which killed Nora McCabe.
The plastic bullet is a weapon of random terror whose aim is to get people off the streets. It is a weapon that has legitimised the death sentence for youngsters who throw stones at the police. It is a weapon that is coming to Britain's inner cities.
Labour's policy is for a ban on the use, storage or manufacture of plastic bullets. opinion wrings its hands with the dilemma of how to create a repressive police presence with a human face, in the black areas, Labour and particularly those sections that have their own experience of state violence, must campaign for a complete ban.
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