The Black Book (available from Red Books, 25p)
Given the lack of seriousness with which the Left tends to treat security in general and the police in particular, this is a valuable pamphlet. It is mainly an investigation into the Special Branch, using authenticated information from various sources. Only a few examples can be given here, For instance, it was the Special Branch which prepared the 'special dossier on the seamen's strike in 1966 which the Branch handed over to the Labour government and which gave rise to the strike-breaking attempt about "the small group of politically motivated men". It was the Special Branch which conducted the hundreds of raids preceding the Angry Brigade and Aldershot bombing trials - helped in the latter by the recent Criminal Damages Act which allows the police to get a search warrant even where no crime has actually been committed, It appears the Branch is organised in quite a sophisticated way with different sections having specialised knowledge of Irish groups in Britain, black groups, Trotskyists etc.
The pamphlet though does not deal only with the Special Branch. There is information on the Special Patrol Group set up in 1964 to provide, it seems, a mobile force to carry out searches and manhunts (most of the arrests on the Irish demo after Bloody Sunday were made by their snatch squads). Again, there is a useful account of the private police forces hired out by firms like Secuncor and Complete Security Lid - with the latter offering companies the service of "reporting on any person who may be suspected of causing dissension or inciting employees to defection".
INTENSIFIED ATTACK A number of points can be made in connection with this. First, though it is wrong and dangerous to believe that fascism rules in Britain - workers organisations still operate openly - yet it is equally wrong and dangerous not to see that the machinery of the state is intensifying its attack on trade unionists and revolutionary socialists. In the last year there have been several major political trials - Prescott and Purdie, Stoke Newington 8, Mangrove 9, Metro youth, Saor Eire 5 (accused of organising arms for Ireland), Aldershot bombing case, Tony Soares, Likewise five leading docker militants were imprisoned, thousands of pounds were confiscated from union funds and police have regularly attacked trade union pickets. None of this ought to surprise any militant. Right through the history of capitalism, the state has defended itself against every attack by unleashing its bodies of armed men.
We should expect this intensification of the state machinery against militants to increase even more. Thus the Black Book quotes such "high up people as Brigadier Frank Kitson (head of the Infantry School in Wilton) who in his book Low Intensity Operations states among other things that "The law should be used as just another weapon in the government's arsenal and in this case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public" In fact the law always has been used in this way what Kitson is saying is that the bourgoisie, in order to stop anyone getting through the net, shouldn't even bother denying it, Various tactics suggested in Kitson's book have already been tried out in Ireland - for instance, terrorism against civilians in order to weed out revolutionaries in their midst.
It is also worth mentioning the sort of laws this government is now contemplating. The Black Book does not discuss the recent Criminal Law Revision Committee's proposals that (i) anyone accused of a crime must answer questions asked in interrogation by the police: (ii) that any confession obtained under threats will be admissable. The main reasons given for these proposals is the need to break organised crime However the police are already able to break up the large London gangs - Krays, Richardsons, Tibbs. What they have not been able to do is break the resistance of trade union militants and revolutionaries. Similarly the Diplock Commission Report on Norther Ireland has advocated that there should be no trial by jury in "terrorist cases and that the army should have virtually unlimited powers of arrest. It is not difficult to see that such proposals are relevant to Britain as well especially given the acquittals of half the defendants in the Stoke Newington trial. Diplock was one of the judges who confirmed the £55,000 fine on the Transport and General Workers Union in the Heatons case. CRUCIAL QUESTION The crucial question for militants is how to fight these attacks. In the first place, it is useless to rely upon the machinery of the bourgeois law and bourgeois democracy as the means of defence against repression. The sole guarantee against the repressive wave lies in the strength of the working class movement and its preparedness to defend all victims of class attack. And the conclusion of this must be that it is not a reformist activity to campaign within the Labour movement against repression. On the contrary, through such activity, wider layers can be brought to an understanding of the fact that it is only the working class that can establish a state which provides real democracy for the broad mass of the population.
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