Adressing institutional racism in the police and the armed forces

The murder of George Floyd by a US police officer in Minneapolis on May 25^th 2020 has sparked international protests against the racism experienced by black people. There is a risk that the focus may drift into a discussion about statues and related generalities. It would be good if politicians, as well as demonstrating support and solidarity for Black Lives Matter movement, could also come forward with a radical, hard edged policy proposal that could be put forward in Parliament, hopefully with cross-party support.

This paper puts forward the proposal that police and senior Home Office officials should be required to re-apply for their jobs.

It is evident that the police service is still infected with the institutional racism that Sir William Macpherson found in his 1999 inquiry into the Stephen Laurence killing. Windrush shows that the Home Office is also affected by the same problem.

It is clear that we need crisp, clear-cut political changes in the police and Home Office. Without a clear policy goal, the momentum created by the Black Lives Matter movement will be diffused and absorbed into a few minor attitudinal changes. If the Green Party leads with a single, radical and effective objective, we may break through the barrier of indifference, and even if we do not succeed in delivering, we will certainly ensure that whatever changes follow will go further than if we do not provide a lead.

The proposal is that every police officer, and higher-rank Home Office officials should be required to re-apply for their jobs. The application process would include a written attitudinal examination and an interview. The written paper would be designed to pick up false prejudices relating to BAME people and other groups who may be seen in a prejudicial light. The officers’ service record would also be examined.

Wrong answers presented by the candidate would be brought to attention, and correct facts would be provided. Education programmes could be run for all officers, covering such topics as the history of slavery in the UK and the experience of racism.

The pass mark would be set, and low-scoring candidates might be accepted, but put on probation and re-tested after a few months. Some very low-scoring candidates would not be accepted.

The re-application would be rolled out in a phased way, with a manageable number of candidates examined each month.

Although the proposal may seem radical, re-applying for one’s job is a routine in some forms of employment, for instance, in the case of researchers employed by some Universities.

In order to sweeten the pill of this necessary filter process, reforms to the conditions of service should be brought in - simple practical reforms such as reviewing and improving the comfort and weather proofing of the police uniform, and bringing in limits to the number of hours police may be asked to work.

What is the cause of the London Riots?

http://www.heart.co.uk/london/news/local/london-riots/london-riots-10/

The riots are criminal and thug behaviour with no political purpose.

But that is the first word, not the last.



Just as it is impossible to have a baby without a pregnancy, so it is impossible to have a riot without a cause - or in this case, causes. The 2011 UK riots are the result of systemic failure, a product of many causative factors.

Let's be clear: to understand the causes of a riot is not to try to excuse the actions of the rioters. They are human, so they are responsible, and have to face the consequences of their destructive actions.

Politicians are trying to fit it into their own categories : Conservatives are trying to pin it on "pure criminality".  Criminality is involved, certainly, but as an effect, not as the sole cause. Labour seems to be trying to link the riots to the cuts in public services, but they are hardly enough (yet - give it time) to cause builidings to be set on fire. We have to look deeper, at the wider picture. Riots are a social action, where many items are thrown into the melting pot, and lie there simmering, until a trigger event causes the pot to boil over.

We know that the original Tottenham outburst was precipitated by the shooting by police of Mark Duggan. It seems he was carrying a replica handgun that had been modified to shoot, but that he was killed while it was still in its cover (a sock, allegedly). This killing re-activated community memories of Cynthia Jarrett's death (possibly form a heart attack caused by her son's arrest) in the locality in 1985, which kicked off a riot in which PC Blakelock was beaten to death.

A peaceful deputation to protest against Mark Duggan's killing outside the police station was ignored by the police for several hours, and so turned into a riot, which triggered riots and disturbances in many other areas of London, (Ealing, Wood Green, Clapham, Dalston ) and some other towns in the UK (Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol). Here is an interactive map of all known sites of trouble.

What we can say for certain is that the riots are an expression of anger and alienation. The looting demonstrates a consumerist (or possibly, to keep the academics happy, post-consumerist) motive. Random smashing of cars and looting for trainers, clothes and electronic goods (but not, as many tweeps noted, bookstores) shows  opportunism at work. They smashed because they could. They realised that with the police occupied elsewhere, their chances of getting caught were low.

Alienation is the absence of a sense of being in a productive relationship with one's physical and social environment, a belief that it does nothing for you, and that you owe it nothing. This is a false belief, built on the perception of "I" in a hostile or indifferent world, rather than "we" living in a world that sustains us, an environment that we should nurture and care for.

In short, alienation is a belief that can be expressed in the phrase "There is no such thing as society".

The alienation has many causes. Sub-prime pararenting is undoubtedly one cause. Community breakdown is another.

Here's a third: the prevailing celebrity culture. Surveys have shown that if you ask a schoolkid what s/he wants to be when they s/he grows up, chances are they will say "a celebrity" or "a football star's wife". So we have a gulf between aspiration and probability. This gap leads to depression and resentment. The culture is fostered by tabloid and TV content, and is paralleled by advertising and consumerist culture, where possession is portrayed as 9/10ths of success. This culture needs to change.

There may be an underlying loss of respect (to the extent that there was any respect previously) for authority because of the cumulative effect of the banking crisis, the MP expenses scandal, and the News International scandal, in which the Metropolitan Police are implicated.

The rioters are multiracial, but in that Afro-Caribbeans are involved, their experience is relevant.
Darcus Howe has been emphasising the resentment of young black kids who are continually harrassed by cops who stop and search them. It has to be accepted that, despite Darcus' deficiencies in the parental responsibility department, S&S  is a significant cause for alienation of black and Asian youth.

Which leads on to the general distrust, dislike and even hatred of the Police. Middle class participants in demonstrations calling for peace and social justice have been sometimes disturbed at some police attitudes and actions. This happens to them maybe once or twice a year. Imagine what it is like to live immersed in an ongoing matrix of police contact.

One aspect of the rioters was their young age. Some appeared to be around the 14 year mark. Again, there may be many reasons for this, but one factor must be the student demonstrations of 2010. There is still massive resentment against the withdrawal of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA). The youngsters will have seen students a year or two above them on TV in demonstrations that police tactics helped to become violent, and they may well be living in families with older brothers who are unemployed.

Youth unemployment is an important component of disengagement and alienation. It is a feature of all the action in Arab Spring countries. Not that I am for a moment suggesting that these riots have any political component. One popular tweet from @MsLuluRose summed it up: The Youth of the Middle East rise up for basic freedoms.The Youth of London rise up for a HD ready 42" Plasma TV.

Confirmation of the unemployment factor comes from Dr Paul Bagguley of the University of Leeds, who researches the sociology of protest.He told Channel 4 News: "They did research in the riots in America in the 1960s and the only statistically significant thing was simply being availableThere's been a sense of watching a slow train crash ever since the credit crunch... people often have different reasons for rioting but one of the main factors sending them out was very simple: because they were doing nothing else" he said.


Unemployment provides availability. And anger.

Camilla Batmanghelidjh, the excellent worker with young people, authoritatively confirms the problem of alienation of young people. It crystallises out into gangsta culture, and it is the gangstas who seem to be providing the lead for the looting, using, so it seems, BBM, Blackberry Messaging, because of its closed communication system. Clearly Blackberry should be opening all of these accounts to the police.


The anger of the rioters has provoked anger in commentators. Calls on Twitter for the Army to be brought in were very common, and I was angrily condemned by @PolleeTickle for drawing attention to the fact that the Bullingdon Club (of which Dave Cameron and Boris Johnson were members) was heavily into criminal vandalism. However, unlike the youth of today, they were able to pay for their destructiveness in high denomination notes.

The positive stories to emerge from this sorry affair are where communities take responsibility for their own protection. Turkish communities united to keep the rioters out of their streets - demonstrating the power of community action. This, although welcome, is a double edged sword, since untrained vigilantes can be riotous in their defence of their own space.

Image below: Turkish residents in Dalston defending

 their streets from rioters. by Yassin

Here, too, is an amazing vid of a fearless black mother haranguing the rioters.

The other positive thing is the spontaneous community cleanup initiated by tweeter @riotcleanup.



The causes listed above are just a few of the many aspects that feed in to the systemic failure that has erupted in the current riots. I predict that since they do not have any specific political objective, they will subside in a few days or less.

If it is systemic failure, we now have to look at the system as a whole. Instead of being a cohesive, collaborative, healthily interactive system, the UK is a radically divided society, with immense disparities between the haves and the have-nots, the wealthy and the alienated. The riots are consistent with the thesis of Wilkinson and Pickett - that unequal societies are unhealthy societies.

The short term answer that will be rolled out is only too obvious: Clampdown. More police and possibly army on the streets, possibly a curfew, mass arrests, an increase in the prison population, leading to more resentment and more alienation.

The real long term answer is many headed, including real action to strengthen community cohesion, but the thing I would major on is radical reform to the benefit system, facilitating people's entry into work that is beneficial to environment and society, together with a restructuring of the economy aimed to produce convergence towards, rather than away from, a median income.

Systemic failure demands systemic reforms. 6 steps to preventing a repeat occurrence.
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[this post has been updated]

Cameron. Big Society. Not Going to work is it? Unless...

Ah Cameron. Come in, sit down. No, not on that one, the wooden one.

How are you doing, dear boy? You're still looking in the pink. And the family? Good, good.

Now.

I have noticed that your Big Society is in the news again.

It has an unfortunate acronym. BS. You do know what else is known by that acronym? Yes? Good. I only ask because of your "Too many tweets makes a twat" blooper.

I have just been reading a critical review by Polly Curtis. Yes, the Guardian, but you should read it.

In essence, your two main actors who were meant to implement the BS have both resigned, saying that your Big Society is literally BullShit.

This is not good.

It's not going to bloody work*, is it Cameron?

As Polly says, you have managed to stimulate the Big Society with your policies, but in acts of direct opposition to his wishes.

Already the students and UkUncut have taken to the streets. 

To come, you have the 

• woodland heritage groups, 
• the unions, 
• library users, 
• swimming bath users, 
• NHS users, 
• unemployed people from all walks of live, notably local and national government employees, most notably of all, ex-policemen and women. 

All gunning for you.

That is a pretty formidable list of opponents. You are going to take a lot of incoming in coming weeks and months. 

You have upset a significant number, Cameron. Well may you fidget.

Look, let us cut to the chase. In order to turn your BS back in to the Big Society that is in your mind's eye, you are going to have to do two things: one is to think outside the box. The other, you are not going to like.

I have been thinking. On your behalf. Cheer up, lad, it's natural to be unable to think in Number 10.
It goes with the job. No Prime Minister has time to think. Prime Ministers are there make a series of semi-random choices in order to terminate whatever is currently making the policy wonks screech at each other. They also sign things, shake hands, and cut tape. That is the job.

So I've been thinking. And reading.

I came across an obscure but very interesting book called Bills of Health It was written in the 90's by an imaginative GP who was struck by story of the policeman who was so busy pulling bodies out of the stream that he had no time to go upstream and see  who was throwing them in.

I won't bore you with the details, though he does suggest that certain reforms could cut the NHS clinical demand by around a fifth. Which should be of interest to Lansley. Or, more to the point, his successor. I trust you are working on names for Lansley's successor, Cameron?

What is interesting is that he wrote a chapter on the effects of social interaction on health. He had to cut it from the original book for editorial reasons, but he has it on the Web. Here is the URL.

You must read it. He says that there is a model of the Big Society. It works.

It consists of paying for a Community Worker and for a Community Space. The neighborhood elect or bring in their Community Worker, who catalyses local action.

It works.

So do it. 

I see by the look of anguish on your face that you are reacting to my mention of "paying". That is the second thing, the one you are not going to like. But you are going to have to do it.

You are asking for peanuts, Cameron, absolute peanuts. Go next door and have it out with Gideon. You're the bloody Prime Minister, he's just Mr Moneybags. Show him who's boss.

That's all.

You may go now. Close the door quietly.

-end-

See also

* RL: Which is a pity, because community work, decentralisation, local action, and conviviality have been core green values ever since I have been in the Green Party, which is now more than 30 years.