Some truisms regarding the police

Here are a couple of points about the police which tend never change.

The police, even in the most liberal state, are the means by which the state physically forces its will onto human bodies. They may carry out subsidiary functions, such as helping children cross the road, but that does not contradict their main role in society.

Police forces everywhere attract authoritarian personality types and attempt to expand their remit. Everywhere and always the police ask for more powers.

In a healthy liberal democracy (which currently Britain is not), government, legislatures, the courts and public opinion together prevent the otherwise inevitable slide into an authoritarian state riddled with police excesses and corruption.

The police can and should have their institutional say although it is widely known in advance what the police will say. They always want more powers, and if they get them they want more. It is up to the people to say no.

Hackgate - corruption in Britain

Hackgate throws light on the British State.

The Hackgate Scandal is still unravelling, although many aspects almost certainly remain hidden. Nevertheless, a chink of light is illuminating the inner workings of the British state. What has been shown is that politicians, their advisers and leading police officers at the very heart of the British state are entangled in a web of dishonesty and corruption. Further details are spewing into the public domain every day.

The nucleus of the scandal is a web of people connected to the company News International, headed by the eighty-year-old Rupert Murdoch. In recent decades this media organisation has been a powerful peddler of the basest form of right-wing news propaganda, the aim of which has always been to defend those with power and wealth while trashing left-wing-wing and progressive ideas. Not content with being just a media conglomerate, the company forged an alliance based on reactionary ideology, financial interests and political blackmail with governing British political parties; i.e. the Tories and New Labour (1997-2010). News International, though ‘gifts’ and appointments, also extended its grip over London’s Metropolitan police so they were hamstrung in tackling News International’s criminality.

The company's wrongdoing that is currently the focus of attention was the hacking of mobile telephones of celebrities, politicians and crime victims, an act of criminality carried out by gangster-like crooks employed by News International. The accusation against leading politicians and the police is that they turned a blind eye and continued to cuddle up to characters from New International even after they knew of this criminality.

Even though the spotlight has fallen on this corruption, public expectations of government, police and media are now so low, it is questionable whether a large public reaction will result.

David Chaytor, guilty yes, but a fall guy

Every time a chink of light falls on the British establishment, be it Iraq or parliamentarians expenses, mendacity and corruption are revealed.

We can debate whether imprisoning David Chaytor at great public expense is necessary. Learning about his humiliation in Wandsworth prison as his anus is searched for contraband can indeed gratify the revenge lust, but much better would be to have him do several years of community service, so he would contribute something to society rather than becoming a further drain on it.

That said, it is clear to me that the man is a fall guy. He, and perhaps later a couple of others, are to be thrown to the lions in an attempt to prove that wrong-doing is being taken seriously when overall it is not.

We should be careful to avoid the situation in which savouring the humiliation of Chaytor, the petty cheat, serves to divert public attention away from those who have done far worse.