In the 1980s, the satirical magazine Private Eye nicknamed the police operation set up to track down individuals involved in the Brixton riots “Operation Wogsmasher”.
What nickname should we give “Operation Malone”, the police initiative now underway to track down and arrest “troublemakers” on the recent student demonstrations? “Operation Teen-Snatcher”, perhaps?
Already, Edward Woollard has been handed a jail sentence of 32 months for dropping a fire extinguisher from the roof of Millbank Tower.
Woollard, who is 18 and who has no previous history of law-breaking whatsoever, has been given a longer sentence than some child abusers or rapists. That is not to call for longer prison sentences, but to expose the utter hypocrisy of a bourgeois justice system which says Woollard's crime deserved more severe punishment than some members of the Derby-based paedophile ring sentenced in the same week.
What Woollard did was undoubtedly stupid but not worthy of a 32-month sentence.
The police’s next prominent target was a protester captured on camera with what appears to be a petrol bomb. His image was plastered all over the media; the police asked people who know him to come forward, or for the person himself to turn himself in.
Woollard's case shows that coming forward and pleading guilty early won't spare you from a severe sentence. Someone suspected of being the “petrol bomb boy” has already been arrested and bailed until March. He is 14 years old.
This is a massive operation. Eighty Metropolitan Police officers are involved. Already, more than 200 suspects, mostly in their late teens or early 20s, have been arrested and the FITWatch website, which reports on police brutality and police tactics on demonstrations, was shut down.
Police have released various CCTV line-ups and are calling on suspects to come forward.
The message of the left in the student movement must be: don’t come forward!
“Operation Malone” is about sending a message that protesting is a dangerous business that we would all do better not to get caught up in.
The thought of nearly 100 coppers combing through CCTV footage could make some people think twice about coming along on a demonstration in future. The brutality we have seen from the police on the demonstrations themselves also aims to create a climate in which taking direct action is seen as something that will get you locked up or beaten up.
We have to send a message back to the police and the politicians who are trying to take away our rights.
AWL members have been involved in launching the Right to Resist campaign, an initiative aimed at mobilising student and labour movement activists around demands to rein in the power of the police and stop them undermining and repressing activism.