SPEARHEADS OF SEVERAL recent incidents have dramatised the growing importance of the police Special Patrol Groups (SPG's) in this country.
In February last year two mem bers of an SPG unit shot and killed two young Pakistanis in the Indian embassy. These young men were staging a demonstration against the treatment of Pakistani prisoners-ofwar by the Indian army. They were armed with toy pistols.
Since then the London SPG's and their counterparts in other parts of the country have been busy. They lave been in action against students, as at Essex University, and workers, as in the present dispute at Imperial Typewriters in Leicester.
Their presence at the 15 June antifascist demonstration was to be expec ted. There they helped set a record for police violence which resulted in the death of student Kevin Gately.
The SPG is the beginning, in this country, of what most capitalist countries established long ago: a specialised force trained and equipped to deal with mass political activity through police violence. Britain has only been able to put off the creation of such a force because for a long time the ruling class has been prepared to meet social discuntent with concessions. The economic crisis in which Britain is now embroiled will end all that.
In France, the years after the war saw the rise of a mass movemer, of workers fighting for better living and working conditions and a better society. The French ruling class, after gaining a breathing space by taking ment and throwing out a few sops, turned lo meet this movement head CARL OWEN This was a joh that required a special team: and so, in 1947, the was recruited, trained and equipped to baudle all those who tried to protclass was running things.
struggle against fascism in the 1930's. Here the police, as usual, the Communist Party into the GovernCRS (Republican Security Company") was born. This was a police force that Army Organisation)
est about the way in which the ruling One of the many incidents in the are attempting to clear a way thrcarrying fascist They never got anywhere with the organis we never let them!
They were mostly small business men and Led.
bruskaway from the National Front which made up mostly of young workers who are policy. With the crisis of world capitalism deepening the bourgeoisie will increasingly stact to leat on these types of organisations gle ped in the bud the Abour movement will ZHE HE TOL LAED On. age that. The Labour coscenment already has enough lecislation to slop them. But The Loods ad-hoc anti-Fascist Conmitter Chicapo police.
Their first assignment was massive strike breaking, In the first year of swoop their existence they managed to crack thousands of heads. Several workers died at the bands of these guardians of "law and order"
In the carly 1960's France was thrown into a big political crisis over its colonial domination of Algeria. The right-wing Algerian OAS | Secret which had many friends in the French police - launched a campaign of assassination and violence to back up rightwing political groups who wanted to see France stay in Algeria.
But thousands of French people. workers, students, and intellectuals mobilised to oppose the DAS and French colonialism. In February 1962, after a particularly violent OAS reply attack in which 10 bombs went off in Paris in one day (including one at the home of a Government minister), a mass demonstration was called by the trade unions, student, and left-wing organisations. The Government tried to ban the demonstration, but ten thousand poople turned out to denounce the OAS anyway.
CLUBS & TEAR GAS The CRS was also there. They attacked the demonstrators with clubs and tear gas, provoking street fights that lasted over three nours.
In one particularly infamous Incident, police charged a group of unarmed and peacelul demonstratots. The crowd fled, and tried to take refuge in an underground station. only to find the entrance gates locked The CRS then foroed other derions trators down the stairs on tap of those who were already trapped. They picked up two men and threw then over the railings on to the crowd below Then they picked up marble-topped tables from the cales and hurled then down on the trapped crowd. When the police had finished their work eight demonstrators were dead.
The CRS played a similar part in the great political upheavol that swept France in May and June of 1968, when millions of workers and students fought against the plans of the ruling class and for a better socicty. CRS squads attacked picket lines, cleared out occupied building. and broke up demonstrations. Thous ands of people — activists and bystanders alike - were gassed and clubbed. Several people were killed, before ruling class order was restorUNITED STATES In the United States, the discontent of blacks and young people produced a growing movement of political protest from the mid-60's on. The appression of the black peopie, the Vietnam War, and the uso of the universities to promote the needs of the ruling class rather than serve the majority of the people, were among the most important grievances. Mass dentonstrations and the occupation of university huildings were among the most important forms of strug Most major American cities ser up and expanded special riot or "tactical squads to deal with this situation. Increasingly political protest was met with police violenoe.
This reached its height at the Democratic Party Convention, which was held in Chicago in 1968, Tens of thousands of protesters entered the city to protest against what the American Gosernment was doing to the Vietnamese people. They were met with the full, brutal force of the fell under the police clubs: bystanders, journalists, TV cameramen, doctors and ambulancemen any one who got in the way — were brut ally beaten The violence of the police was so uncontrolled that even an official Government enquiry described it in its report as a police riot.
Similar soones took place in every major city in the United States as the new police squads went into action. In one operation at San FranCisco State University tbat city's tactical squad arrested 450 striking teachers and students in a singe It was also in San Francisoo that American workers began to realise that the police club was not reserved for students. In 1969 striking workers at the Standard Oil Company had their picket lines smashed by police, who beat and arrested workers, their wives and children.
Last Saturday was just a taste of what the SPG has in store for us if it is allowed to stay in busineas. As the bankruptcy of British capitalism becomes more and more obvious to an ever larger number of people, the threat to the privileged position of the ruling class will grow. The ruling class will reply with brutality and repression - and the SPG is designed to become the spearhead of that That is why it is so urgent for the labour movement to mount an Lo mediate campaiga for the dishand ment of the SPG's, and similar units which are set up to mete out repres sion to the mass movement.
Nexr week we will take a cinser look it the aims and organingtion of the SPG and their connerperts in other conneries, and discuss in more derail what the riding class i up to.
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FIGHTING FASCISM IN THE THIRTIES SPG - CRS - Tac' squads