Who guards the guardians?

Baroness Casey has issued a damning report on the conduct of the Metropolitan Police. This independent review was set up last year following the kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving member of the London police. During the proceedings another member of the Met charged with rape turned out to be a serial rapist and a violent sexual predator who had preyed on women for over 20 years.
    London’s police say their vision “is to be the most trusted police service in the world”. In their own words they say “we contribute to making London the safest global city, we protect its unique reputation as an open and welcoming city, and we want Londoners to be proud of their police”. But that’s been, once again, seriously questioned.
    While the Met is the public face of law and order in London that’s rolled out to control protests and demonstrations and monitor picket lines for the benefit of the employers that they ultimately serve. Catching criminals is another matter and sadly only a small number of perpetrators are ever brought to justice.
    Baroness Casey was tasked with determining “whether the Met’s leadership, recruitment, vetting, training, culture and communications support the standards the public should expect”. Her report concluded that London’s police is “riddled with deep-seated racism, sexism and homophobia”.
    None of us should be surprised at its conclusions or the corrupt and decadent culture within the capital’s police that the report exposed. Nor should we expect more from the worthy social worker whose recommendations are little more than appeals for the Met to genuinely reform itself.
    Some on the left call for a renewed effort to end the corrupt culture that exists within the Met. Others for the replacement of the Met with a new police authority. Sadly none of this is going to happen and even if it did it wouldn’t change the essential nature of the London police.
    The Metropolitan Police is a key instrument of the bourgeois state and its culture reflects that of those who rely on it to maintain the power of the ruling class in the capital of the country they control. Rapists and murderers within the police force are, naturally, severely punished – not just for abusing their power to break the very laws they’re paid to uphold but also by bringing the institutions of repression that the ruling class ultimately rely on to maintain their power, into disrepute.
    The police are supposed to protect and serve the public; fighting crime and promoting justice for all under the laws of the land.
    Who will guard the guardians is a question that goes back to the philosophers of ancient Greece. Socrates believed the solution was to properly train their souls. These days the talk is of “transparency”, “accountability” and “awareness programmes”.
    Communists rightly argue that only a people’s police force can justly serve the needs of the working class. But we will only get that when we get a people’s government, and that sadly is not on the horizon at the moment,
    In the meantime we must argue for the complete overhaul or break-up of the Metropolitan Police to weed out the psychos and perverts in its ranks and root out the sexist, homophobic and abusive sub-culture that was exposed in the Casey report.

Starmer the warmonger

Sir Keir Starmer has denounced the Stop the War movement as some sort of tool of Russia in a desperate attempt to further ingratiate himself with what he thinks is the dominant section of the British ruling class. Writing in the Guardian following talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels the Labour leader says the anti-war movement is at best 'naive' and at worst a force bolstering those who threaten democracies while telling the Times that Labour is the “party of NATO”.

   Conjuring up the ghosts of Labour’s old right wing Starmer said “Attlee, Healey and Bevin saw communism for what it was and were prepared to stand up to its aggression,” he said. “Today’s Labour party has the same clear-eyed view of the current regime in the Kremlin. We know, as they did, that bullies only respect strength. Russian tanks sit, engines revving, on the verge of annexing Ukraine but protest placards waved here by the usual suspects condemn NATO not Moscow... to condemn NATO is to condemn the guarantee of democracy and security it brings and which our allies in eastern and central Europe are relying on as the sabre-rattling from Moscow grows ever louder”.
   The people of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria will, no doubt, have other ideas about NATO.
Starmer may think that posing as a super-patriot will convince the ruling class of his usefulness when the time comes to get rid of Boris Johnson. He also clearly believes that there is widespread public support for wars and military interventions in Britain. He’s wrong both counts. The Tories don’t need Starmer and the people don’t want war.

Bye Bye Cressida Dick

No one will shed any tears over the departure of Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police chief who was finally forced to resign after a damning indictment from the Mayor of London last week.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was "not satisfied" Dame Cressida could "root out the racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, discrimination and misogyny that still exist" in the force or restore Londoners' trust in the Metropolitan Police.
   The Labour politician said the last straw was the Commissioner’s less than robust response to police watchdog's report into the Charing Cross cops who joked about rape, LGBT people and violence towards women on the social media. Khan said that "the response from the Commissioner wasn't up to the scale of the change required in the Met Police Service".
   It’s surprising it took so long for Khan to see through her though to be fair, Cressida Dick’s talent was in brushing aside criticism from the public the police claim to protect. . Repeated claims of misogyny and racism in the force; the dismal handling of the “spycops” scandal and the “partygate” investigation and accusations of that the Met had failed to properly investigate claims of indecent exposure by one of the force who raped and killed a woman in 2021.
None of us will miss Cressida Dick. Whether her successor will be any better remains to be seen.