STAGE ONE (my Previous ‘Post’): ‘Shocking’, ‘terrifying’, ‘what on earth do we do about it’?
It is 34 years since soldiers were deliberately drafted in to smash heads and break the miners strike. In fact, it is now a life-time away. What shocked then has become routine now – which shows just how far down the road we’ve moved towards a ‘militarised police state’ in Britain.
In 1984 Thatcher broke every rule in the political book. She was ready to declare A State of Emergency in which the army and police would control the streets, vital supplies, and national interests. Thatcher had put her name to a Police-State-lockdown of Britain. The police and soldiers were sent to Orgreave to smash resistance. Britain came perilously close to a form of political dictatorship.
STAGE TWO: THE REWARD FOR THE ARMY & THE POLICE? THEIR SYSTEMATIC, DESTRUCTION!
A question for you? Why, when there are more ‘terrorist’ attacks than ever before, are police and army numbers at a “precariously low level”?
Why are the Tories (the so-called Party of law-and-order and defence) deliberately killing-off both?
Facts: by 2020 the Army will be down to just 50,000 soldiers. That is lowest figure in 250 years! By next year police numbers will be at their lowest in 30 years (“precariously low” warns the normally conservative Police Federation).
Some reward for those soldiers and police who foolishly followed the political dictat of Thatcher instead of doing their duty to the public who pay them.
It was the miners, their families, their communities, their jobs, the Tory government came for in 1984.
34 years on it is the turn of the army and police to be targeted, undermined, and destroyed!
To all those police officers and soldiers (all of them from working-class backgrounds) I ask this question: “can you not see what blind loyalty to corrupt politicians buys you. Are you now rueing the day you helped to break working-class communities and their trades union resistance in the process handing power to politicians hell bent on destroying the police, the army, your jobs and your livelihoods”?
And , once they’ve done that. What then? I’ll answer that in my next ‘post’ (The Militarisation of Britain STAGE THREE).
FINAL WORDS, FOR THE MOMENT, ON – ‘CONSENT’ …..
When Sir Robert Peel set up the police he wrote down the golden rules of Policing. The central, vital, rule was that ‘policing must be done with the ‘consent’ of the public’. Peel warned that if ever that public consent was undermined or, God forbid, broken then policing would be lost or destroyed.
I broadcast at the time, and say it even more clearly now, the military-style policing of 1984 has done untold damage to the reputation of the police, and of soldiers.
…. & ‘ACCOUNTABILITY’.
The police and soldiers are, ultimately, accountable to the public. Not to their officers, the ‘State’, the Queen, and certainly not to politicians.
Margaret Thatcher deliberately set Britain on the road to ruin. A path which is taking us precariously towards an unnacountable militarised police state.
IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP.
Just as the blind obedience of those police and soldiers in 1984 has led them towards their own destruction, we all need now to wake up to how this Prime Minister is hell-bent on completing what Thatcher started.
But, please, don’t get complacent about just how deep this spreads!
STAGE THREE to follow. (Including the murky roles of a TORY Defence Secretary, and a LABOUR Home Secretary).
Paul Starling
