ACCORDING TO police records, knife crime has risen by 21 per cent in the past year, and gun-related offences by 20 per cent. There were over 37,000 arrests for knife offences and over 6,000 for gun crimes. All recorded crimes were up 14 per cent. For the communities, families and individuals caught up in these […]

The 27 year campaign for truth and justice is a lesson in the value of courage and solidarity By Dave Stockton Hillsborough – which saw the death of 95 Liverpool fans on 15 April 1989 – remains one of the worst sporting tragedies. Given that that it took 27 years for the South Yorkshire Police […]

by KD Tait, 22 July 2015 Note: An edited version of this article was first published on the Left Unity website On 22 July 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by anti-terrorist police in a tube carriage at Stockwell underground station. The operation was carried out two weeks after the 7/7 bombings as […]

By KD Tait 9 May 2015 London’s Metropolitan police celebrated the arrival of the first Tory-majority government in 18 years by attacking an anti-cuts demonstration against the new regime and its plans for a first 100 days of shock and awe austerity. 15 arrests were made as people resisted attempts by the police to disperse and […]

By Marcus Otono 4 May 2015 Just like a horrific version of the film “Groundhog Day”, police killings of African-Americans in the United States repeat themselves endlessly. The latest iteration of this macabre pattern was the brutal assault on 25 year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore on April 12th, 2015 while in police custody. Gray died […]

By Andy Yorke Revelations about police spying on the family of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence have backed the Tory-led coalition government into a corner, forcing Home Secretary Theresa May to agree to a public inquiry, admitting that the “full truth has yet to emerge”. Stephen was murdered by a racist gang in 1993 […]

By Jeremy Dewar On a windswept, rainy Thursday night on 11 February, around 40-50 people gathered in front of Lambeth Town Hall to voice their opposition to the police. The occasion was the “consultation” exercise run jointly by the London Mayor’s Office and the Met, which is touring all 32 London boroughs: MOPAC. Left Unity’s […]

By KD Tait The Mark Duggan inquest verdict of “lawful killing” shows courts will never bring Met killers to justice. Only united working class action alongside black community self defence can halt the killings and end police impunity A jury has delivered a majority verdict of “lawful killing” in the inquest into the death of Mark […]

  By Jeremy Dewar Thanks to the actions of former CIA employee and intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, it is now widely known that Britain and the US are actively monitoring and listening to millions of our private emails, phone and Skype conversations every day. George Orwell, author of 1984, couldn’t have dreamt of the scale […]

  Statement of the League for the Fifth International 20 August 2012 The League for the Fifth International condemns the brutal massacre – reminiscent of the Apartheid era – of 34 striking miners at the Marikana platinum mine, Rustenburg, South Africa. We condemn the actions of the British-based Lonmin owners for refusing to negotiate an […]

The recent police killings of Mark Duggan and Anthony Grainger expose the racism rife in the police force. Conditioned to see young, black men as drug dealers and gangsters, in both cases the police shot dead an unarmed man.

The #justice4grainger campaign is growing – and it will not stop until it gets justice. It now counts more than 6,000 members and is forging solidarity links with many other police justice campaigns. The campaign was launched after Greater Manchester police shot dead Anthony Grainger on 3 March 2012. His death at the hands of […]

By Marcus Halaby   THE HEADY combination of big business, land development, local and national politics, and the struggle for international prestige has always ensured that major sporting events like the Olympics are fraught with issues for the communities that live and work near them. Few people, however, could have expected the news that ground-based […]

The latest crisis in the police goes beyond individual racism, the whole system defends the police from accountability or prosecution. Crown Prosecution Service The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the government agency involved in bringing forward cases for prosecution, works hand in glove with the police. It has a long record of giving police a ‘get […]

Only token changes have been made since the 1999 Macpherson report concluded that the police were “institutionally racist”, after an inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence murder case exposed rampant police corr­uption and racism. Despite rising discrimination against Black and Asian people critical reports on continued police racism in 2004 and 2009, particularly around the racist […]

In the last week, the London Metropolitan Police have become swamped by a series of exposes of police racism dating back to the London riots.  The allegations expose the way the whole justice system protects the police and defends racism. On 30 March the Guardian newspaper released a recording made by Mauro Demetrio, a 21 […]

This article gives a stark insight into the day-to-day experience of police brutality and racism in our inner city communities that fuelled the recent riots. Although we don’t agree with the author’s opposition to cuts in police budgets (Workers Power stands for democratic, working class policing from below, not capitalist policing from above), it’s vital reading […]

The vengeful sentencing after the riots have revealed the true nature of the capitalist state. Jeremy Dewar calls for a campaign to defend all the detainees

Jeremy Dewar looks at some of the most shocking riot-related sentences to date. Others will surely follow, as the crown courts start to deliver their sentences. • Anderson Fernandes, 22, was charged with burglary in Manchester after he took two scoops of coffee ice cream and a cone from a delicatessen. He gave the cone […]

Jeremy Dewar argues that the Conservative Party has completely reverted to type after the riots

As images of buildings and cars set ablaze spread through the media, Joana Ramiro reports on the harsh reality of North London’s Tottenham Hale community, where police brutality, racism and repression are, 30 years after the Brixton riots, still the inescapable reality.

Last year, returning from a football match, student Tommy Meyers was savaged by a police dog while being arrested for assault. Now, following his acquittal, he and his family talk about the incident at Guardian.co.uk

The anti-union laws are holding us back – we have to organise to break them, writes Joy Macready

By Simon Hardy Many people think that the police in Britain are somehow neutral in political matters. But recent events have exposed the real nature of the police force. This article examines the role of the police and the state in our society The role of the police Lord Imbert, ex-chief of the Metropolitan Police, […]

The Philip K Dick short story Minority Report, which was made into a film starring Tom Cruise, sees a futuristic police force arresting people before they have committed a crime. Worryingly, the arrests of ‘might-be’ protesters before the Royal Wedding have turned this sci-fi fiction story into a near reality.

Fifty anticuts pages taken down under cover of royal celebrations At the same time as the royal wedding, alongside a wave of raids on squats and ‘pre-emptive’ arrests of activists, Facebook took down fifty pages, all belonging to groups coordinating protest against the government’s vicious spending cuts.

Nina Power comments in The Guardian on the intense and repressive police crackdown on anti-cuts protesters, just a few days before the royal wedding. Today, several social centres were raided. In Camberwell, south London, between 8 and 10 police vans tried to evict residents from the ‘Ratstar’, even though they had been given permission to […]

“DIRTY BABYLON!” snarled the crowd in time to the reggae beat. It was a line from a 1980s Smiley Culture hit: “Cockney say Ol’ Bill, we say Dirty Babylon”. How appropriate. The death of Smiley Culture in police custody is yet another suspicious death at the hand of the Met. Little wonder it has angered […]

The death of Smiley Culture while in police custody has struck a chord that has resonated deeply across south London and Britain’s black community. Even the Evening Standard says thousands will march on 16 April in “the largest black community-led demonstration in years”. Jeremy Drinkall reports

The explosion that claimed the life of Omagh policeman Ronan Kerr does not further the struggle against British occupation in Ireland one jot, writes Bernie McAdam.