On BBC 2’s Question Time at the end of April, right wing historian and media pundit David Starkey raged against British police. He complained about their increasingly paramilitary style and hostile behaviour towards those they are meant to serve. Watching this was a new experience for the average socialist viewer. Law and order has long been bread and butter for the right, even if it Labour has rarely been much better, writes Piers Mostyn.

Starkey’s comments arose in the context of a big public debate sparked by the death of Ian Tomlinson and police handling of the G20 demonstrations. They were hardly the exception within the establishment.

Has there been a sudden change of heart by the right? Or does this reflect a recent escalation in police repression? The true story is a bit more complex.

The G20 protests were a challenge to world leaders meeting in London to discuss the international recession. Serious questions were posed about the global economic system, climate change and whether the political leaders responsible for the mess should be trusted to sort it out. Over several days thousands held marches, sit downs, occupations and other actions to make heard a radical alternative.

But the police had other plans. They cranked up the tension in advance by warning of “extremist” violence in a bid to soften up public opinion for a show of force. Repressive “crowd control” was then deployed resulting in scores of injuries, complaints and arrests. Hundreds were detained for hours in a blatant attempt to prevent this alternative being freely expressed – in a tactic euphemistically known as “kettling”.

But it was the death of innocent bystander Ian Tomlinson that transformed the wider public’s perception of these events. Walking home, he was caught up in the police blockades. After being abused, assaulted and pushed over, he died.

The police tried to spin the news by falsely suggesting that the demonstrators’ actions had delayed his treatment and covering up police responsibility. But as the true picture emerged, through footage from mobile phone cameras and the like, public outrage mounted. More complaints then came to light.

At the time of writing one officer is under investigation for manslaughter and there are at least three official inquiries. But despite a month of anger in which the issue dominated the headlines, top officers have been unstinting in their defence of G20 demo policing claiming they it had been a “remarkably good job”.

Nothing new here. But the widespread public anger was unusual, and its sympathetic treatment by mainstream media certainly was.

For those at the receiving end of the policing, of course, the experience was unfortunately less than novel.

From the Anti-Nazi League demonstrations of the late 1970s, through the inner city riots of the early 1980s, to the miner’s strike and printers’ strike at Wapping into the anti-Poll Tax demonstration of March 1990, the attempt to repress illegal raves in the 1990s and the anti-capitalist and anti-war demos of the following decade – brute force and military-style tactics have become routine.

Cops batonned protestors and removed their identification tags throughout this time. “Kettling” was legitimised by the courts a number of years ago. A whole generation has grown into adulthood believing it is normal to see riot vans cruising the streets of residential communities and officers kitted out with an array of weaponry and protective gear.

But over the decades things have been far from static. Wave after wave of laws have extended police powers both on the street and via the workings of the criminal justice system. There have been episodic crises over miscarriages of justice and the need for police accountability, particularly in the early 80s and early 90s. But that has barely dented a succession of measures to place more power in the hands of the police.

Irish, strikers, Muslims, environmentalists

These include anti-terror laws broadening the definition of “terrorism” to breaking point, removing a requirement for suspicion, particularly before stop and search and restrictions on the right to demonstrate. Successive extensions have been made to the time the police are allowed to hold someone without charge, to the point where it is now among the longest in the world.

This continuous ratchetting up of police power and the erosion of individual and collective rights has been accompanied by a propaganda chorus from across the political spectrum aiming to whip up fear of crime, disorder and “terrorism”. This has focussed particularly on a supposed “threat” from variously black youth, the Irish, striking workers, Muslims and more recently environmental protestors.

This hasn’t simply been scattergun rhetoric. The ideological drive has sought to root itself in real insecurities experienced by millions of working class people as they grappled with wave after wave of neo-liberal capitalist economic reform. The lure of a defensive wall against terrorism, immigration and crime is offered to compensate for yawning inequality, low wages, “flexible working practices”, declining pensions and a disappearing welfare state.

With the “war on terror” this ideological and repressive campaign reached new heights. But with the massive popular opposition to the war on Iraq and the revelation that it was built on a tissue of lies, its contradictions also began to unravel. The ruling class was split from top to bottom over internment without trial and attempts to lengthen detention before charge. The malaise spread to concern over British complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition. Judges, Tory politicians and journalists have been forced to speak out under the pressure of public outrage.

Carrying out repressive policies in a society making any claim to democracy is fraught with contradictions. Minimum preconditions are that at least a substantial number of people can be persuaded that the cause is worthy and that the state can be trusted in its use of this power. Neither will occur unless those who are running the state are believed to be telling the truth. The Iraq war dealt a body blow to all that.

Both Brown and Cameron had been hoping that nonetheless business could return to normal as they pretended to tip toe away from Iraq. But then came the recession – perceived by millions not, as Brown feebly claims, as an unpreventable event, but as precisely a consequence of the policies and practices of government and opposition over the previous decades.

David Starkey and the Daily Mail

But it doesn’t follow from a loss of confidence in the political establishment that repressive practices will necessarily stop. On the contrary they are more likely to be ramped up in circumstances where an economic crisis is hitting a deeply unequal society in which the majority feel politically disenfranchised.

But it does mean that civil liberties, the police and the abuse of state power have become a highly disputed terrain.

Of course, when Starkey and The Daily Mail worry about the policing of the G20 demo there is no small element of opportunism in taking attacking Labour when it’s down.

But the ruling class is also looking over its shoulders at the militant revolt by students, workers, indigenous communities and others in Greece, Italy, France, China, India and elsewhere. A revolt they fear, rightly or wrongly, may come here as working class anger at the assault on jobs and wages begins to bite. Earlier this year senior police officers warned that the economic crisis could lead to serious public disorder.

A whole series of repressive government policies have accordingly come under pressure, in some cases leading to minor U-turns.

Britain is the surveillance capital of the world, with information from CCTV cameras, bank accounts and a host of other sources being used to assemble vast data banks on millions of peaceful, law-abiding citizens. But this has come increasingly into question.

There has been a furore over the recruitment of hundreds of informers in environmental campaigns and the heavy handed policing of the climate camp protest at the proposed Kingsnorth power station. The Court of Appeal, in a separate case concerning the now-routine filming of protestors by police camera operators, has ruled against the unrestrained use of this tactic. And the national eavesdropping centre at GCHQ in Cheltenham was recently forced to issue a rare statement denying it has plans to monitor all internet and telephone use.

Similarly the government’s massive DNA database, covering hundreds of thousands of innocent people, is now at least being limited following a landmark European court ruling after years of growing pressure on the issue.

The escalating and racist use of police stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act which does not require any suspicion of wrong doing has also come under the spotlight.

Union refusal

Such stops increased from 37,197 in 2006-7 to 117, 278 last year with a far greater proportion of “black” and “Asian” targeted than white. According to Liberty only 6 are arrested for every 10,000 stops. Of 1,471 arrested on suspicion of terrorism since 9/11 only 340 were charged with such an offence and only 196 convicted. The majority of these are for minor offences.

Bowing to mounting opposition the police have decided to significantly reduce their use of these stop and search powers – despite the supposed threat from “terrorism” remaining as high as it ever has been.

Although the government has vowed to press ahead with the reviled identity card scheme, the Tories have vowed to scrap it if they come to power and the union of airline pilots (BALPA) has become the first group to refuse to take part when compulsory trials start in Manchester and London City airports this Autumn.

The loss of public confidence in the state repressive apparatus is such that, despite a whitewashing report from parliament’s lap dog scrutiny committee (over whether the security services could have prevented the 7/7 bombing) there is a general perception that M15 incompetence is as much a cause for concern, if not more, than terrorism.

Even Justice Minister Jack Straw, a stalwart defender of the war on Iraq as Foreign Minister at the time of the invasion, has been forced to accept that the “anti-terrorism” laws built up over the past 8 years should be reviewed and may be scaled back. And he has been forced to shelve plans to build the biggest of his proposed Titan “super-prisons”.

Of course it isn’t all one way. A bid to derail the unprecedented Viva Palestina solidarity movement with Gaza has involved blatantly unwarranted abuse of political and individual rights, with the media consistently failing to report this.

But the issue of state repression and civil liberties is one where big campaigns can be built bringing together struggles on the environment, the war and the new attack on the working class.

A new initiative, responding to the killing of Ian Tomlinson (United Against Police Violence) has been launched, bringing together groups dealing with deaths at the hands of the police. Building protests through organisations like this will help us to take these issues out of the hands of the Starkey’s of this world.