Civil liberties, justice, crime

A system where the rich get away with child abuse

If you’re rich and well-connected, you can get away with child abuse. That’s how this system works. Ex-Tory MP Rod Richards claims to have seen evidence implicating Peter Morrison, a very high-placed Tory, in systematic child abuse around North Wales children's homes between 1974 and 1990. Morrison was parliamentary private secretary to prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990, and organiser of Thatcher’s failed effort to retain the Tory leadership that year. Another leading Tory, not yet named, is also said to have been involved. The North Wales child abuse took 16 years to get out. Then...

News in brief

The announcement that subjects such as drama and art will not be included in the new “English Baccalaureate” (EBacc) and that it will only focus on “core” subjects (English, maths, science, history and languages) has provoked criticism from people in the arts that the country’s “creative edge” is at threat. But this misses the point. The narrowing of the curriculum will badly affect working-class students who have fewer opportunities for self-expression. Sell out Lambeth council, which bills itself as the “Co-operative Council”, is on the verge of selling its last stock of “short life” social...

"Sounds from the Park" press release

Researchers are looking for people to come forward with memories of Speakers' Corner and for volunteers who would like training in oral history techniques (as well as a chance to work on education, a radio show and an exhibition at Bishopsgate). This is how they explain it. Speakers' Corner is the spiritual home of public debate and free speech in Britain. Bishopsgate Institute and On the Record are collaborating on Sounds from the Park : a project that will uncover its eccentric history and traditions. “I have been a member of Speakers’ Corner audiences since 1960. I mingled with the crowd...

Total policing

Ira Berkovic picked up a copy of the Metropolitan Police’s “Total Policing” leaflet on the 20 October TUC demonstration. If it was more honest, it would have said something like this… The Metropolitan Police Service hopes that you stay at home. However, if you insist on demonstrating, we are here to make sure you only do it within strictly defined parameters and with constant reminders that we are in charge. This leaflet explains how the demonstration will be policed. What you can expect to see? A large police presence. We’re clever about this, because we’ll do a “good-cop” thing by having the...

Don't buy into Police and Crime Commissioners!

On 15 November people in England and Wales will vote to elect a Police and Crime Commissioner for each of 41 police forces. The PCCs replace the existing Police Authorities and will therefore be in charge of police funding and producing a "Police and Crime Plan" - which includes policing priorities and objectives, and a set of policing targets - which will be used to hold the chief constable to "account". The Conservative Party - who proposed creating the role - have argued that Police Commissioners are "the most significant democratic reform" to policing in England and Wales "in our lifetime"...

Assange: the wrong question

Paul Field, Mark Osborn, and Andy Forse ( Solidarity 254-7) are all, I think, asking the wrong question about the Assange case. It is not the job of AWL, or the left in general, to be an adviser to Assange. Would he be more at risk of extradition to the USA in Sweden? Maybe. We shouldn’t pretend to be legal experts who can assure him not. Is he using Sweden’s extradition bid as a way to get more resonance for the demand for assurances against extradition to the USA? Maybe, and if so good luck to him. Has he just panicked? I don’t know. Our concern is the politics. In political action, rather...

Hillsborough: state cover-ups and police corruption

Can any of us really believe the protestations of politicians and cops in the last week that they have been “shocked” by the findings in the Hillsborough report? If they were genuinely shocked at the changed statements, the catalogue of lies, the obstruction of justice, and so on, this points to a level of incompetence among them that is difficult to comprehend. If they are just saying it because it’s the right thing to say, and in fact knew about or suspected the extent of the cover-up, then we can only conclude that the go-to response of the British ruling class when the integrity of its...

Assange: safeguards and assurances?

The crux of this matter appears to be resting on whether Assange would be safer from extradition to the US in Sweden. His detractors claim that he would be, and claim that Assange’s defence to the contrary is a smokescreen to avoid the rape charges. Several counter arguments have been presented. The first of these notes Sweden’s unblemished human rights record and their ratification of the European Convention of Human Rights (Owen Jones, The Independent, 17 August). Jones and others have failed to mention the fierce criticism the Swedish authorities came under when in 2001 they handed over two...

Hillsborough - the ruling class cover up finally exposed

After 23 years of struggle, the Justice for 96 Campaign has forced out the truth about the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and the deliberate cover up and smear campaign by the ruling class to shift the blame onto the fans. The report of the investigation by the Hillsborough Independent Panel has not only vindicated the campaign by the victims' families, it has made plain the cover up was much more widespread and calculated than even they realised. This was a entirely avoidable and also entirely predictable illegal killing. From the 70s onwards, fans, journalists and managers had been pointing out...

Assange's refusal to face rape charges harms his cause

Before I wrote the article on Julian Assange (“Assange, rape, free speech”, Solidarity 254) I had a good look at the bourgeois press. The serious mainstream papers and magazines seemed unanimous (based on legal opinions that they had solicited or examined) that the extradition of Assange to the US from Sweden was harder than from the UK to US. Of course, if this is true, Assange’s case for staying here to best avoid falling into the US state’s hands collapses. Paul Field, himself a lawyer, has a different view ( Solidarity 255). And, here-and-there, there are others who should be listened to...

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