A release from the Glasgow Defence Campaign in support of the right to protest. No matter what the state and its minders say, everybody has the right to peaceful protest, unless of course we live under fascism, which is a very strong possibility.
GLASGOW DEFENCE CAMPAIGN - ONE YEAR ON.
http://glasgowdefencecampaign.blogspot.com/2011/09/glasgow-defence-campaign-one-year-on.html
The
British state - the police, courts, parliament and media - has responded to the
uprisings in English cities with a visciousness and hypocrisy that only the
imperialist ruling class and its defenders are capable of. They ranted about
destruction, anarchy, violence, disorder and lawlessness while the Royal
Airforce had flown over 15,000 missions against the people of Libya and dropped
high explosives on residential areas killing innocent men, women and children.
What causes the greatest damage, we ask, a half brick or a jet fighter loaded
with murderous missiles! Which is the more anti-social crime? Helping yourself
to a pair of jeans or helping yourself to a country's oil?
In this
context, the reality of ruling class violence and lawlessness, we look back at
the last year of the Glasgow Defence Campaign's work and the argument that we
made in July of 2010 that the British state was preparing to attack the living
standards of the working class through the cuts budgets and would attempt to
control and criminalise all resistance to the rule of the wealthy. As a Fight
Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) supporter stated at a May Day rally in Dundee
this year: the defence of working class living standards is the defence of
democratic rights.
Comrades from FRFI got out onto the streets of
Govanhill, Glasgow last year to protest at the austerity budget of the newly
elected Tory-Con Dem government. Within hours we were facing Strathclyde
police's attempts to immediately close down our leafletting and petitioning.
Regulations were cited and invented to try to force us off the streets. Our
human rights to expression and association - clearly upheld in law- were ignored
by the bullies in uniform as newspapers and stalls were seized and charges
issued against FRFI supporters.
We stood firm in the face of this
political policing and fought back by openly challenging the police censorship
and gathering support from every group and individual sharing our concern about
the attack on democratic rights. We urged unity and public protest to defend
those rights and warned that we were only at the begining of the state's
attempts to limit and make any protest innefective and isolated.
Towards
the end of that year as students took to the streets everywhere to protest at
education cuts we recognised the emergence of new police tactics to control,
intimidate and criminalise protest. From Parliament Square in London to George
Square, Glasgow, the kettle was on. FRFI supporters were targeted and arrested
by police on protests in December and January and hauled in front of sham
courts. Delayed arrests, house raids, frame ups, surveillance and assault were
evidence of the state giving the green light to the police to close down
protest. The Glasgow Defence Campaign was established to meet these attacks in
kind, recording and exposing every incident of police harassment, naming and
shaming the officers involved, taking protests to the doors of the District and
Sheriff courts and the streets of Glasgow. The aggressive, bundled police
operation to evict the Free Hetherington occupation on 22 March educated new
layers of young people in the need to organise rapidly against such repression.
On 16 April, following another week of arrests and convictions of FRFI and other
anti-cuts activists, the GDC held a defiant rally in Glasgow city centre to
demand an end to the political attacks, uniting progressive forces. Five days
later, all charges against seven activists were dropped as they were due to
appear in court.
Now, faced with the anger of inner city youth facing
poverty and unemployment - sparked off by another police killing - the British
state's real methods of operation are obvious to many more people. Their idea of
justice is to ignore the theft of billions by the wealthy elites represented in
the cabinet and parliament or the corruption of policemen and women by the
millionaire press and to treat the working class as criminals deserving only of
a prison cell should they rebel.
The Glasgow Defence Campaign states its
commitment to the argument that the defence of democratic rights is the defence
of the working class. We define that working class as workers in jobs, youth in
revolt on the streets, the disabled and poor, immigrants and asylum seekers- all
those who the rich are trying to make pay for an economic crisis not of their
making.
The police who tried to close down our political activity last
year and who were made to back off by the campaigning work of the Glasgow
Defence Campaign have been made bolder and more arrogant by recent developments.
At the time of writing this statement, concern is rising about a steep rise in
deaths at the hands of police - 3 killings in 8 days. Recent arrests in Glasgow
and the return of police interference in legitimate and legal political
organisation should put us all on alert and demands that unity and solidarity
must be fought for and built in the struggle to defend democratic rights and in
the fight for real justice.
POLICE HANDS OFF PROTEST!
DEFEND
DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS!
AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!
Issued by
the Glasgow Defence Campaign, 6 September
2011
glasgowdefencecampaign.blogspot.com
