Police planting, bribing with drugs and so on, the rising any policeman who might be so bold as to suggest that it was a bad idea to dump a man into a river, even if he was, as the prosecution delighted in reiterating, dirty and so on (and black, as nobody mentioned). (1)
Of course many other cases do not get to court. What about the girl in South London who was beaten up in the van on the way to the station, told to strip to prove she was a woman, told to spread her legs apart, and then threatened with a police truncheon which, its manipulator said, "*is the right size and the right colour, isn't it?" What about the many other examples which are known to black communities, perhaps to black organisations which have tried to do something about it, perhaps to some white revolutionaries, who have generally Tailed to do anything about it at all? What about the many other cases which are known only to the victims and perhaps to a few friends? We should not assume that, just because the Oluwale case happens to have got some publicity and to have come to trial, it is in any way an isolated event. And the police are still at it in Chapeltown, Leeds's ghetto, apparently quite undaunted.
(1) The Yorkshire Post particularly excelled itself in reporting all this. On its front page, for example, it put a box-headline:"JUDGE SAYS" that Oluwale was a filthy dirty vagrant. Inside it turned out that the judge was not so bad after all: he was in fact admonising the prosecution, telling them everybody knew that Oluwale was a filthy dirty vagrant, but it was irrelevant to the case. But the Yorkshire Post gleefully headlined him, out of context, showing clearly whose side it was on.
in chaos The anticipated steady applause greeted Vic Feather's speech to the TUC rally against unemployment on the eving of November 24th. But what happened next visibly shocke the assembled union bureaucrats. Some 2,00 trade unionists were gathered in the Central Hall, as TUC Chairman George Smith of the Woodworkers' union prepared to follow Feather's standard, heart-rending homilies by introducing a further dozen members of the General Council clearly intent on making the same speech. Whispers and murmurs became shouts and protests as one bureaucrat after another tried to deliver the routine mixture of moral condemnation of the Tories and crocodile tears forthe unemployed. From one corner of the hall after another, angry hecklers demanded action from their leaders, not mere verbal and distant denunciations of the Government. A surprised Dick Briginshaw, leader of the printing union NATSOPA, taking his turn on the rostrum, pressed on with half-hearted and monotonou references to 'the tragedy of the unemployment figures, the failure of the Government policies', but offered no remedy outside of Harold Wilson's re-election to Downing Street. As the Chairman appealed for order and TUC stewards strode threateningly along the aisles, it became obvious to the most innocent observor that a solid half of the audience had turned hostile to the platform.
Within twenty minutes, the chants of "General Strike!' and loud calls for overtime bans and against productivity deals presented each new speaker with a straight choice -either support the demands for action or be shouted down altogether. Percy Coldrick of the railway clerks' union TSSA rushed to advocate widespread nationalisation but his audience was not placated. 'Socialism!'cried voices from the back of the crowd. Now, an emotional Danny McGarvey of the Boilermakers rose to his feet. Evidently moved by the furious mood of the meeting, he nearly screamed. Yes, the time for verbal warfare was past, he said. The heckling and interruptions grew less frequent. Waving his arms, McGarvey recalled the massive TUC march against the Industrial Relations Bill on February 21st. The unions had marched their men to the top of the hill, only to march them down again'. Such demonstration: were not enough, he roared. The crowd in the hall quietened and then even began to cheer. Now was the time for action, cried McGarvey, to fight unemployment. Then"we must all write to our M.P.s and demand that soinething be done!" In sheer uproar, the assembled workers hooted with derision and laughed McGarvey off the rostrum.
At this stage, Feather's deputy, Lionel Murray of the TUC, ran down from the platform and turned on a girl heckling from the front row of seats. Clearly unable to accept that a genuine trade unionist could behave in such a disruptive fashion, Murray demanded to see her union card. Smilingly, she waved it at him and he retreated fast. Meanwhile, the Chairman's calls for inity' in the meeting had some effect, but met with shouts of "unity with who?' and 'unity for what?' The fiasco ended with people walking out of the hall as Jack Jones, on the platform, made an appeal for strike action against unemployment-but with the proviso that this would have to be the collective policy of TUC unions, ie. his union would not be taking any such action. A group of print workers made for the exit doors. Waste of time they said, and disappeared. 128 pages, 75 p.
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