Between the Conservatives securing a significant parliamentary majority in December 2019 and the entire political agenda becoming about Covid-19 in March 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved to unite his hitherto divided party behind an authoritarian pro-Brexit, English nationalist agenda. A right-wing ideologically driven narrative, pandering to the most reactionary elements of the cross-class coalition that had put the Tories so firmly in power, ran through all the government’s announcements on policing, prisons, immigration, counter-terrorism and trade union rights, and continues to do so in response to the current crisis. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Lockdown
On 25 March, the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 (SI 350) became law. This is the third piece of legislation to be passed in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic since 10 February. In particular, the latest regulations ban gatherings of two or more people and stop people leaving their homes other than for essential tasks. In sum the various laws allow for the total policing of the civilian population and the effective suspension of democracy, whilst making next-to-no demands on big business or the super-rich to alter their activities.
Already, on 24 March, even before the latest law was actually on the statute book, there were reports of very different policing approaches in middle class and working class areas, with black teenagers, who have long been the prime target of stop-and-search and dispersal orders, once again being harassed.
Following a small ripple of discontent among some MPs – most notably David Davis, the same Conservative politician who in 2007 opposed Labour Prime Minister’s Tony Blair’s plans to detain alleged terrorists for 90 days without charge – the latest Regulations have been set to expire after six months, as opposed to two years, which was the original intention. The other two pieces of law are nonetheless in force for two years. Whatever, their initial period, as Irish people will remember from the passing of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1974, what begins as an emergency renewable power can rapidly become the norm.
Shoot-to-kill
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Britain, Johnson and his government were ramping up police powers and clamping down on any criticism or challenge. The shootings of Usman Khan on London Bridge on 29 November 2019 and Sudesh Amman in Streatham, south London on 2 February 2020 showed us that shoot-to-kill was now the normal response of first, rather than last, resort in terrorist incidents, and on 8 March a further fatal shooting in Whitehall demonstrated that this extends to non-terrorist incidents. In all cases any debate on what other options the police may or may not have had has been closed off; as we reported in the last issue of FRFI, prior to the election, Johnson promised that if returned to power, he would ‘… ensure that [the police and security forces] do not come under constant attack from the human rights lobby …’
Filling up the prisons
Despite repeated calls on it to release low-risk, short-sentence, elderly and vulnerable prisoners to prevent the spread of Covid-19 (see page 14), the government has not only refused to take any such action, but is continuing to press ahead with measures which will increase the prison population further.
On 28 January Under-Secretary of State for Justice Chris Philip asked Parliament to approve the draft Release of Prisoners (Alteration of Relevant Proportion of Sentence) Order. This had been first put to Parliament in October 2019, following a Conservative promise in August that all prisoners sentenced to seven years or more for violent or sexual offences would in future have an earliest release date at two-thirds of their sentence, as opposed to halfway.
These measures come into force on 1 April 2020 and will affect anyone sentenced from then on. A separate kneejerk arrangement for terrorism prisoners has already been rushed through Parliament, becoming law on 26 February, subjecting all current as well as future terrorist prisoners to serve a minimum of two-thirds of their sentence and only be released following a Parole Board direction.
The government estimates that these changes will lead to an increase in the prison population of 2,000 over the next ten years. If further plans for longer overall sentences and a planned Counter Terrorism Sentencing Bill – which introduces a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years for a range of terrorism offences – are not shelved, the net effect will be even greater.
The Bill met with no real opposition, although some Conservative MPs thought it was still too lenient, and that all prisoners should serve the sentence passed by the courts in full. The Labour contingent – which now has no chance of winning any vote – tokenistically refused to support the government, on the basis that, although it did support extended custodial periods, no thought had been put into how these would be managed.
This is indeed the case. The entire programme of making people convicted of violent, sexual or terrorist offences serve longer is simply tub-thumping bravado. No research or planning has gone into providing any evidence as to why, beyond simply longer containment, someone who serves nine years out of a 12-year sentence, as opposed to six, will be any less dangerous on release. This applies across the board but particularly to people convicted of terrorism. Although there are around 30 far-right prisoners convicted under terrorism legislation, and a handful linked to various liberation and other struggles around the world, the vast majority of the 224 terrorism prisoners are convicted on the basis that their actions stem from a commitment to Islamic fundamentalism. Their ‘radicalisation’ cannot be reversed by prison programmes or behaviour therapy. The reasons for these prisoners’ beliefs and actions are complex and intrinsically tied up with Britain’s imperialist and racist foreign and domestic policy, including its attacks and invasions of Muslim countries, and – when it suited its agenda – the backing and encouragement of the very same forces it is now attempting to ‘deradicalise’. Hashem Abedi, who on 17 March was found guilty of 22 counts of murder, is just such a prisoner: the child of anti-Gaddafi Libyans who were given asylum in Britain and whose crusade against the Libyan Jamahiriya was encouraged by the British state, he went on to conspire with his brother Salman to bomb and kill British people at Manchester Arena in 2017.
Racist immigration system
On 11 February a charter flight took off from Doncaster airport, deporting 17 Jamaicans whose presence the British government had branded as ‘not conducive to the public good’, due to one or more criminal convictions. Many had lived in this country for the majority of their lives, and at least seven of those who were deported are reported to now be in hiding, fearing for their lives due to gang violence and lack of family contacts to assist them to integrate into what is to all intents and purposes a foreign country. The Home Office had intended to send around 50 people but a fortnight of protests, together with last minute legal challenges, mainly based on the detainees’ lack of access to legal advice, led to the majority of those scheduled for deportation getting at least a temporary reprieve.
Successive governments have used charter flights since 2001, when this method of deportation was introduced by the Blair Labour government; common destinations for mass deportation include Albania, Afghanistan, Ghana, Nigeria and Pakistan. Overall, about 12,000 migrants are forcibly removed from Britain each year with another 20,000 signing up to go voluntarily. On 10 February, the day before the flight to Jamaica, the House of Commons debated the issue, with Immigration Minister Kevin Foster repeatedly pointing out to Labour MPs, including David Lammy, Diane Abbott and Yvette Cooper that the current ‘automatic deportation’ regime was introduced by Labour in 2007/08 and that none of them voted against it or objected at the time.
Despite the lack of any political will to stop immigration detention and deportation, the current crisis has compelled the government to act, although even then it took legal proceedings to make this happen. On 18 March the charity Detention Action began a legal challenge against the continued use of immigration detention during the pandemic. As a result, the Home Office swiftly released around 350 detainees, and at the next court hearing on 26 March gave an undertaking ‘to urgently review the cases of every person held in immigration detention, with a view to further releases over the coming days’. The Home Office has also halted the new detentions of ‘persons liable to administrative removal’ to 49 countries, including Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Albania.
Ministers for repression and racism
The latest group of Tory ministers seem determined to outdo every previous government’s draconian racism, at whatever cost, including throwing their own relatives under the bus. Home Secretary Priti Patel left the Commons before the debate on the Jamaica charter flight, leaving Foster to answer questions in her place, while the new Attorney General Suella Braverman asked Parliament: ‘Does the Minister agree that shrill virtue signalling and faux outrage ignore the political and legal realities of the issue? My parents emigrated to the UK from Commonwealth countries in the 1960s and could have been caught up in the Windrush issue. Thankfully, they were not. The government have apologised for this issue and are taking remedial action on it. Will the Minister confirm that British citizenship is a privilege, not a right? Those foreign national offenders who abuse their time here need to face the full force of the law.’ A week later Patel admitted, when questioned by usually right-wing radio host Nick Ferrari, that her own family would probably not qualify to migrate to Britain under her new post-Brexit version of the points-based immigration system.
Patel and Braverman are part of the new coterie of Conservative ministers who are determined to stamp their rule on all parts of government. Patel has affronted civil servants in the Home Office who say she is a bully, while Braverman – despite herself being a barrister – has no regard for the law, clearly viewing legal constraints as an inconvenience. Since becoming an MP in 2015, she has consistently voted against all laws designed to promote or extend equality and human rights. She voted against same-sex marriage, against an investigation into the Iraq war, against the right to remain for EU nationals post-Brexit, against higher taxes on banks and against measures to prevent climate change, while voting for more restrictions on trade unions, reductions in spending on welfare benefits and subsidies to local councils, increased privatisation in the NHS and a stricter immigration and asylum system.
Building the fightback
The December election result at least dispelled the myth that Labour politicians hold any solution to any of this, so with even the faint possibility of any pushback from within Parliament now totally off the table, all those campaigning against this government’s racist agenda and draconian future plans will need to step up our game and build a movement that can resist deportations, police violence and attacks on the right to organise. Even within the new circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic there is work to be done to defend our rights and to ensure that prisoners and immigration detainees are released now, and that the government does not immediately resume deportations as soon as it is able to.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 275, March/April 2020
