On Saturday 22 August, Birmingham RCG organised a march in Handsworth against Operation Fearless. Local residents came out to the demo alongside Young Struggle, Food not Cops, Queers 4 Palestine, Birmingham Anti-Fascists, Kashmir Diaspora UK and India Labour Solidarity.
Operation Fearless is an initiative by West Midlands Police which has brought increased police presence, stop and search and immigration enforcement raids into Handsworth. It was welcomed by Labour Party, Green Party and Your Party representatives and politicians and since it began we have heard stories of police harassment and violence from people approaching us on stalls.
The march stopped outside the offices of Soho Business Improvement District, who saw fit to hire private security to follow and film our procession but we did not allow that to intimidate us. We also stopped outside a local police depot and the offices of MP Ayoub Khan. Khan, an independent MP who is a member of Your Party, left an egregious message for the protesters in the window of his office in anticipation of their arrival, stating that he was proud to bring Operation Fearless to the area and denying that it had increased the rate of stop and search. He also used fictitious statistics to claim that the local crime rate was far higher than the national average. Make no mistake: this is the politics of Your Party, begging the police to bring harsher repression to areas which have been historically deprived and paternalistically insulting residents’ intelligence when they fight back.
If you’d like to join our campaign please come to our open organising meeting on 17 October at the Shaheed Udham Singh Centre, Soho Road.
