Changing Role of the British 'bobby

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LAST AUGUST, Home Secretary William Whitelaw, shrewdly assessing the kind of anger being stoked up in the inner citieș by Thatcher's policies, called on Chief Constables to review their plans to combat "spontaneous disorder"

By that time their plans were in most cases well in hand. The British police force, though still basking in its image as an amateurish, unarmed force, now comprises no less than 12,000 riottrained police organised in Police Support Units and Special Patrol Groups.

And the whole method of policing the inner cities has changed to prepare for confrontation.

For the last fifteen JOHN LISTER surveys the buildup of police power two-way radios, backed up by lavish computer networks and elaborate systems of communications to provide instant support.

Police and army chiefs, alarmed by the upsurge of revolutionary struggle in Europe and the mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war in 1968 in Britain have devoted a great deal of attention to training forces to deal with picket lines, marches and riots.

The late 1960s saw some debate on whether this was best done by setting up a European-style "third force" of riot police, with their own sophisticated equipment (water cannon, CS gas, armoured personnel carriers, pistols, rifles and sub-machine guns).

The limitation of the traditional-style British police were summed up son who pointed out that while the police "must be acceptable to the majority of the citizens" the army is "the final repository of arbitrary force" , and needs no such acceptance.

In 1971 a Home Office working party concluded that a new "Third" force would be unacceptable to British public opinion. Therefore, it proposed, sections of the existing police force should be retrained and reequipped to do the job.

Saltley

This conclusion was reinforced by the evident impotence of an outnumbered squad of police in the face of the mass picket of Saltley coal depot during the miners' strike of 1972.

Army units, which had been on standby with shields and truncheons, were not used: the depot was closed, and the. Heath government was eventually forced to concede to the miners. But from then on the police preparations went ahead with increased vigour.

The objective was the training of police units which could act with the necessary "arbitrary force". • and distance themselves from any dependence upon «acceptance by the majority of citizens"

The outcome was the establishment of Special Patrol Groups as a fully fledged paramilitary corps within the police force. Initially masquerading as units to "fight crime" , the SPGs soon equipped themselves with vans carrying riot shields, pistols, rifles, sub-machine guns, smoke grenades, truncheons and visors. In Manchester the armoury is supplemented by Armalite rifles: in Hertfordshire the SPG carries pump-action shotguns.

The SPGs are trained in the use of Cs gas, and many train with military units, in SASstyle operations.

These elite groups are supplemented by additional riot-trained officers in Police Support Units, in which the paramilitary nature of their assignment is only slightly lower key. Indeed "crowd control" or riot work is now a basic part of police training.

Anti-fascist

PSUs have played a role in attacking antifascist mobilisations such as that in Leicester in April 1979. PSUs from no less than 20 forces outside the city were mobilised (including a 42 vehicle convoy bringing 600 heavies from Manchester).

In the riot at st. Pauls in Bristol last year police withdrew and held back - waiting for reinforcements of trained riot police to arrive from other areas.

The brutal physical tactics of the SPGs and PSUs are supplemented by an increasing police programme of firearms training. 12,000 police officers currently receive regular handgun training. And the occasions on trial cities.

The traditional notion tive force, focussed on civil issues is under attack, he has warned.

"Social pressures tend more and more to seduce police thinking and public awareness away from this towards a quasi-military reactive concept."

This, he warns, coald lead to a style of policing "more akin to that of an occupying army."

The hard-pressed residents of Brixton, Toxteth and other inner city communities will know exactly what Alderson is talking about.

But they will also know that if Alderson represents the liberal wing of the police, police chiefs in their own areas are emerging as openly political figures, backing up every reactionary movement by the Tory government, pressing for sweeping new powers, and making their main target the repression of strikes, demonstrations and working class resistance.

They will know that even at a time when there are more police than at any time in British history -113,000 at the end of 1979 - the Thatcher government continues to hand policemen lavish pay rises (60% in 2 years) and to seek further recruitment.

This is no accident. It flows from the conscious policy of successive Tory and Labour governments to strengthen the machinery of the capitalist state. They do so in order to withstand the anger and mass action of a working class driven to desperation by unemployment, poverty, and social service cutbacks.