Press Gang

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JAMES Anderton, the charismatic head of Manchester police. is being gagged.

He is not allowed to deliver his message. His views are kept from the public. His penetrating thoughts about the future of law enforcement remain a locked away secret.

Who knows what pearls of wisdom vital to the future of a peaceful, equitable and happy society would fall from his lips - if they had not been sealed shut?

And who has done this dastardly act? The Marxists on Manchester police committee, that's who.

If it were not for the brave, small circulation underground papers passed from hand to hand and the clandestine TV stations of the BBC and ITV, nobody would have the least idea what was going on.

Back street Only front page lead articles in the Telegraph, the Times, the Dally Express and a variety oi other backstreet publications have managed to produce veiled versions of what Anderton believed.

"In the past 1 have always been a powerful advocate of police accountability to local government and that is providing the practice is not abused."

That is just one of the gems the public has not been allowed to hear. It was tucked away on the front page of the Daily Express in an interview marked 'Exclusive'. (What a tragedy that such perceptive warnings should be confined exclusively to just one of these duplicated "samizdats" would go a lot further Cals now and suggest that the time might come when some kind of totally independent police board should be established within the community - outside the strict realms of local political affairs"

Who else could have thought of it? Independent.

Just like the press. Why not a police board made up of these independent newspaper owners themselves?

It can never happen while these Manchester Trotskyites on the police committee manage to stille all thought. By deferring Anderton's report to a special mecting this week la brilliant touch that) they denied him the chance of reaching "the public of Greater Manchester" - a fact revealed by the Times which is not available in Manchester.

People's tribunal

What these anarchist terrorists wanted was to force Anderton into the dock of a people's tribunal to answer questions from any "Tom, Dick or Harry" who were "not infrequently even hostile, impertinent and rude."

This inquiry concealed true nature by managing get 99.97 of the youth Manchester to boycott it.

Only the Express revealed that Anderton could face the sack if a Left Labour Government were returned.

This is all the more likely because, even as Anderton is gagged the Labour Left is praised, paraded and adulated in the pages of the popular press.

The disgraceful way in which the London New Standard has become the official fan club magazine of Ken Livingstone is too well known to need illustration.

But what about Tony Benn and the Daily Mail?

Anderton