at Ravenscraig the police instituted a policy of mass arrests of miners on their way to the picket - before any offence had been commalted Nottingham looks more ane more like police state. Last week Parts ot the Notts village of Blidworth were placed Areas welc sealed off and road blocks established. People were warned they would be arrested if they left their houses appeared that phones were cut off IneS went dead atter the first few digits.
excuse for this harassment that familles in the WCIC putting up. Yorkshire miners OE flying DICKel duty 'harbouring criminals' police preferred to see it.
Door to door searches questioning 100k place until the NUM was forced to lead most of the pickets out of the area. But the effect has been harden attitudes against the police the miners.
The police force in BriPicket beaten by police arm of the state government, never neutral. But the last months have seen steps toward making it directly a political police force. The county-based structure of the police has increasingly been eroded so that it acts Madonal quasimilitary force.
Hampshire police were 'air-lifted' into Nottingham, by plane in a nationally co-ordinated military-style action against the miners. Like the the North of ireland. of occupation Nottingham is occupied by the police force from all corners of the country.
Nou a new stage has epened with the use of anminers carrying unlimited tines and sentences. The value to the government of these laws is that the hearings are before a judge rather than local magistrate.
It seems that the bosses are turning to their time- honoured tactics of using prison sentences to crush If the existing law doesn't serve their purposes then they just dig up an old one or the judges make up a new one.
That's what they did with the Tolpuddle tyrs, when they used a law dillicu de tion in the armed forces to deport the early unionists. And that's what they did with the postal workers when they tried to support the Grunwick strikers six years ago. The clauses of the law they uswere originally aimed against highway robbery.
thev aim to use medieval riot laws against the miners.
If miners are sent to jail Whose morement has to respond. They're tried before » hen the! ient the Shrewsbury pickets to jail, using imprisonment repression to smash the workers' movement.
The miners have shown that attempts to divide the movement, attempts to starve them back work, attempts to mobilise accus them, attempts to slur and slander them (like with the 'Mine Fuehrer' picture of Scargill) won't work.
Now we all have to show that police repres sion and prison sentences won't work either. As the Shrewsbury pickets' banner said: 'if they take you in the morning ... they will be that night.' experience for JOEL TGWU. He told Socialist should surprise no one.
THE EXPERIENCE of communities Newham, Brixton, Toxand St brutal mixture of high unemployment deprivation violent aust with heavy-handed policing. The history of Britain's black community over the last 30 years is littered WIlN instances of racial attacks.
During the 1970s white housing estates became centres of National Front activity. In the early '80s нете murdered in broad davlicht in busy streets.
For years now blacks have warned of the tren‹ towards increasing misuse police powers.
Sadly, these warnings have not been heeded even after such monumental evenis as ine Swamp '81 police operation which led to the Brixton uprisings.
Blacks find it disturbing that white activists are sometimes surprised at the POLICE VIOLENCE AND intimidation is not a Britain's black community.
O'LOUGHLIN is a black member of the Action police behaviour during the course of the miners dispute 'new methods' employed by the police to defeat the miners strike. It is tragic see labour movement activists caught off of snatch squads, plain comes ponce, no gear ROACH ment continually and so on.
At the same time, are baffled at the lack of opposition to the Police Criminal Evidence Bill. Once passed it will give police even widerranging powers, which will be used to crush working class aspirations and ter rorise communities. Colin Roach demonstration: black people face harass-
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independent Enquiry NO COVER UP