Those of us to the left of Labour often have a clear cut view of the police. The unconventional wisdom is that they are an “armed body of men” whose primary function is to protect capitalism and are therefore an enemy to be dismantled asap. So entrenched is this position that challenging this view can feel a little like heresy.
I very much enjoyed Reuben’s recent car crash of a post over at The Third Estate where he called for socialists to show “class solidarity” with the police. We know what happens when an angry, dogmatic bear is poked with a stick and the judicious use of the word “fucktard” to describe those who disagreed with him might not have helped. Whether he wrote the post to persuade or provoke, it draws out key weaknesses of the ‘abolish the class enemy now’ approach.
It seems to me that a left that is unable to voice support for black officers taking on racism within the force, for example, is one that’s passing up the opportunity to make a serious point, help shift “canteen culture” and do some good.
Limits to the role of the police
Campaigners often have a jaded view of the police due to direct personal experience but it’s important to recognise, as Reuben does, that this is a minority experience. The police are more usually in a more mundane law enforcement role. Whether that’s patrolling drunken Friday night streets, not finding my stolen car or handing out neighbourhood watch stickers the public’s interaction with the police (and with crime) tends to be much more location and class specific.
In general the police have a fairly realistic view of their own role. For example, recently police in Islington decided to issue food vouchers to hungry children caught stealing (BBC) rather than locking them up. This kind of proportionate response to crime is very welcome, unless you refuse to see this action as anything but an attempt to protect bourgeois apples from being scrumped.
Right now the police have socially useful roles and reactionary ones. Certainly the police tend to lean towards a macho and right-wing culture, over-sensitive to any criticism of the force even when it’s highly merited – like shooting innocent people and then lying about it – but it’s not the whole story.
Can the police play a role in progressive movements?
The lower ranks are overwhelmingly drawn from the working class and, for good and ill, share a lot of the concerns of that class. Right now we’re seeing an unprecedented level of anti-government protest from the police, protest that the hard left has been far too self-conscious to try to engage with, despite fitting perfectly with the focus on opposing austerity.
Back in May Paul McKeever, the Police Federation’s chairman, said: “The march is the only way that police officers can demonstrate their anger. The reality of the cuts to policing is really beginning to bite; numbers are beginning to fall rapidly. In the past year alone we have lost over 5,200 police officers from the frontline and we are witnessing the privatisation of core policing roles as chief officers struggle to cope with budget restraints. The Government need to be realistic about the outcome of severe cuts to policing; we cannot afford to compromise on public safety.”
It wouldn’t hurt to recognise that he might have a point would it?
Lessons from elsewhere
We don’t have to look back to the Russian Revolution when Lenin was hidden in the house of the Helsinki Chief of Police to find examples of the police taking part in left movements. It’s happening right now.
In Wisconsin the police were ordered to break up an occupation of the Capitol building by trade unionists defending basic union rights. The police refused, publicly stating “We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out. In fact, we will be sleeping here with you!”
The Portugese police have been a visible part of the anti-austerity movement taking part enthusiastically in the demonstrations up to and including the protests a few days ago.
I was at a meeting recently where a speaker from the Greek socialist prodigies Syriza stated that their members in the police had been extremely useful in countering police repression, and finding out where the far right were to attack. Police members of a hard left organisation? What magic is this?
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras, on a recent visit to a police station, laid out his position “It is especially important that we ensure the conditions that will enable every citizen to walk about freely and without fear in every corner of the country, 24 hours a day… That is where [a policeman’s[sic]] work is. To protect the citizen and not to be at MPs and ministers’ offices,”
He stated that he had “complete confidence in those forces that occupy themselves with the exclusive goal of the Greek police, which is to fight crime”
Let’s loosen up
There is a clear chasm between Tsipras’ approach to those on the UK left who are current feting Syriza, possibly because they’re more star struck by success than interested in ideas. The police aren’t qualitatively worse here than in Greece, Portugal or Wisconsin but when the cops marched the main interaction with the left (as they marched past the trade union strike rally) was anti-police chanting and contempt, which the cops and their families stoically ignored.
I’d suggest that a slightly less dogmatic approach towards an anti-austerity march might have been more useful. Not because deaths in custody or casual misogyny aren’t problems but because those in the police who hate these things currently lack allies, and it would be good if they had them.
There should be no concessions to the culture of cover-ups, corruption and violence that exist in parts of the police and appear to have the tacit support of the top brass. However, I’m not sure that means pretending that the police serve no useful function or that each and every one of them shoots foreigners for fun.