For people not actually incarcerated, ‘lockdown’ is over in England and nearing an end in Scotland and Wales, with the remaining regulations in force in all three countries increasingly difficult to keep up with. Although the lockdown regulations have generally had public support, the implementation and policing of the rules have clearly demonstrated, yet again, that we are not ‘all in this together’ and that black people continue to be disproportionately targeted and criminalised. NICKI JAMESON reports.
As of 4 July, there are no longer Coronavirus Regulations fines in England for being out of your house without ‘reasonable excuse’; however research published by Liberty Investigates and The Guardian on 26 May highlighted that, while they were in operation, Black, Asian and minority ethnic people in England were 54% more likely to be fined under the Regulations than were white people. This was based on an analysis of the 18,000 fixed penalty notices issued between 23 March and 11 May. Since then, no detailed statistics have been published on which to base further analysis, despite a succession of top cops squirming under questioning by the Home Affairs Select Committee on 24 June, during hearings related to the ‘Macpherson Report – 21 years on’, and insisting they had nothing to hide.
On 15 June, lawyers representing youth worker Kusai Rahal sent a pre-action letter to the Metropolitan Police, contesting the imposition of a Coronavirus Regulations fine on him for being out of his home ‘without lawful excuse’ on 12 April – the same day on which Dominic Cummings made his now infamous trip to Barnard Castle. Unlike Cummings, who received no sanction, Rahal – who in the course of his work had been called to the scene where a teenager was being arrested by the police for alleged drug offences – was both arrested and fined.
Stay alert – stay racist
The Select Committee also heard shocking evidence about the use of stop-and-search and tasers during the lockdown period. Young black men in London were stopped and searched by the police more than 20,000 times between March and May, equivalent to more than a quarter of all black 15-24-year-olds in the capital; more than 80% of the 21,950 searches resulted in no further action. Metropolitan Police Chief Cressida Dick was questioned by the Committee Chair, Labour MP Yvette Cooper, as to whether she was alarmed that ‘…in one month alone, more than one in 10 of young black men in London were stopped and searched and found to be carrying nothing and found not to be doing anything that required further action… at a time when actually most people would have been at home during lockdown’; Dick replied ‘I’m not alarmed, I’m alert’.
The police also continue to target a range of events which they have labelled as ‘illegal parties’, whether this illegality relates to Covid-19 regulations, lack of licences to serve alcohol or play music, or simply the fact that the attendees are overwhelmingly black and working class. The negative press and heavy policing of these gatherings is in stark contrast to the blind eye turned to street parties organised to celebrate VE Day on 8 May in clear defiance of the then strict regulations.
Protest erupts
At the start of lockdown, although the RCG and a few other groups continued a limited form of socially distanced street activity, in general the combination of the government-imposed regulations and people’s genuine fear of spreading the virus meant that political protest activity was severely curtailed. This came to a sudden and spectacular end following the violent racist police murder of George Floyd in the US on 25 May. Within days protests in Britain had grown to involve thousands of people.
To date there have been approximately 260 arrests in relation to these demonstrations, although this includes both Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters and right-wing counter-demonstrators; the majority of the latter were arrested in relation to 13 June, when racist ‘statue defenders’ attacked BLM protesters, who successfully fought back. Some arrests have been made on the actual day of the protests, with a few carried out pre-emptively, and a growing number after the events, following the police publishing photo galleries of suspects. This tactic has been employed both in London and in Bristol where, although Avon and Somerset police were applauded for not intervening on 7 June, when protesters toppled the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston, they subsequently issued photos of 18 people they wanted to interview about the incident. Since then there have been two arrests, with one person charged.
No justice, no peace
Racist policing in Britain is as deeply embedded and institutionalised as in the US (see p12). On 16 July a police officer in north London was filmed with his knee on the neck of a suspect in a scene chillingly reminiscent of the horrific manner in which George Floyd died in Minneapolis. This type of policing is the legacy of years of assumed racial superiority deliberately embedded into the uniformed and armed forces of rich imperialist states, which have invaded and plundered most of the rest of the world. But the tide is turning and the conditions exist in which a strong anti-racist, anti-imperialist resistance movement can begin to be built.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 277 August/September 2020
