Poachers Turn Game Keepers - Policing is Political

By AM Thursday, January 19, 2012

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Tonight The Pensive Quill features an article by guest writer Sean Matthews on Sinn Fein and policing which looks at the issue from an anarchist perspective.

The transition from opposition to defenders and enforcers of the status-quo by the Provisional Republican Movement has not been without its hiccups along the way which is what you would expect with a path littered with hypocrisy and broken promises. Writing in the Belfast Telegraph Sinn Fein’s National Chairperson Declan Kearney referred to the ’dark side’ of policing and warned his party’s support for the police is ‘not unconditional,’ which is merely a mantra to cover up growing discontent and disillusionment within republican heartlands as they are now the game-keepers lock, stock and barrel.

The fact that Sinn Fein prefer to grovel to the mainstream media every time the PSNI hit an own goal and step out of line only highlights the ineffectiveness of holding the police to account in the various policing boards. Instead of ’putting manners’ on the police, the Shinners are now part of the problem and a victim of their own success. The result of embarking along the cul-de-sac of reformism as the infamous anarchist Alexander Berkman warned nearly a century ago:

With growing success in elections and securing political power they turn more and more conservative and content with existing conditions. Removal from the life and suffering of the working class, living in the atmosphere of the bourgeoisie . . . they have become what they call 'practical'. . . Power and position have gradually stifled their conscience and they have not the strength and honesty to swim against the current. . They have become the strongest bulwark of capitalism.

Ironically, there was always a case for the Provisional Movement joining the state policing structures, considering their armed wing policed working-class communities with brute force akin to establishing its thuggish authority and showing who's boss than sorting out ‘anti-social behaviour’. In the end the truth is they might as well get paid for the job they already do. Emerging from the shadows are republican groups intent on filling this vacuum and following in the path of their predecessors.

The Provisional Republican Movement’s gradual embrace of the state’s mechanism on ‘law and order’ can be traced to the origins of the political peace process and its involvement in Community Restorative Justice Schemes in the 1990s. This was based on some level of co-operation in terms of dialogue and funding from state statutory agencies. As a result of the threat they posed to the legitimacy of the status-quo in the long-term, these schemes have either been fully incorporated into the criminal justice system or under the direct control of armed groups: therefore undermining the very essence of their independence serving to recuperate dissent.

A stronger, more militant and confident working class will be able to, and must, take on responsibility for tackling anti-social crime in its own communities as part of wider independent movement, because the police won’t do it and are complicit due to the very nature of capitalism and the state. No amount of token reforms, ‘sexy’ makeover, and government from Dublin, Stormont or London can disguise this fundamental role of the security forces or if you live on the Falls or the Shankill. Playing the green and orange card does not come into it as James Connolly referred to the fact- that there would be little difference if the unemployed were rounded up ’to the tune of ’St Patrick’s Day’ and the bailiffs wore ’green uniforms and the Harp without the crown, and the warrant turning you out on the road will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.’

Unlike republicans, we don’t oppose the states armed forces because they are 'British' although we recognise the colonial legacy of policing in Ireland and it being on the frontline of British Government policy counter-insurgency policies such as 'normalisation' and 'Ulsterisation'. The primary role of the police as the armed wing of the state is to defend and protect the wealth and power of the ruling class whether it be in Soviet Russia or here. In the words of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin ‘When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick" sums up the basic anarchist position.

We should not succumb to populist quick-fix calls for ‘zero-tolerance’, or 'more police on the streets' providing the green light for an intensification in police brutality which ebbs and flows depending on the intensity of class conflict and balance of forces as we have witnessed in the occupy movement particularly in the US and during the Arab Spring.

A critical element in this struggle in the short-term involves exposing and highlighting police brutality through organising public meetings and independent groups based in our communities that will expose and oppose police harassment.

The Queens University Republican Congress held a public meeting in November on Political Policing in Ireland- Ten Years of the RUC/PSNI which was addressed by Ciaran Murphy (RNU), Stephen Murney (Eirigi) and Chris Donnelly (RC/IRSP). While meetings such as these represent an important step forward in highlighting police harassment we need to bring these type of meetings into our communities at the coalface and not just confine ourselves to one community or the needs of political activists if we are to have any hope building a mass movement that links all these struggles together. We must demonstrate through our actions and methods that only by collectively organising, practicing solidarity where we live and work as a class can we begin to tackle and remove the scourge of ‘anti-social crime’ and the real crime of capitalism.

The police are not concerned about protecting me or any of the working class, because they are put here by the ruling class to protect the interests of the rich from the poor. To enforce their laws that keep together their system, that keeps them at the top and the majority at the bottom.