informage

These were my experiences twelve years ago, on an anti-racism demo in Welling, south-east London, protesting against the presence of the neo-nazi BNP's headquarters in close proximity to the bus stop where 16-year old Stephen Lawrence was murdered. It was an almost entirely peaceful demonstration of around a hundred thousand who'd come to express their outrage at the flagrant racial hatred incited by this loathsome grouping. The menacingly impersonal riot police were out in force from the outset - despite later TV news reports to the contrary - and they very quickly deployed a pincer movement that had those of us near the front crushed so badly people were screaming and climbing up a steep embankment to escape.

I've been remembering those events because of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian at Stockwell underground station in south London. He lived in a block of flats in Tulse Hill, as did I four years ago. I can picture the walk past Brixton station - closed because of the previous Thursday's explosions - up Stockwell Road past the skaters and up to the station. What would I do if confronted by several non-uniformed heavies on the way. I might run, depending on my state of mind. If I was a non-native, and my English wasn't so good, I could well run. If I had an expired visa I might definitely run. Whatever happened this is a tragic killing, and a firm example of the violent force that is the state.

Now I'm not indifferent to the difficulty the threat of suicide bombers poses to the London Met. Personally, and - I admit - utterly simplistically, I think the best way to stop people wanting to kill us is to stop killing others. Yes, there's a lot more to the situation but right now I don't intend to go any deeper than that. I abhor the violence the US and its friends inflict on the rest of the world, and I abhor the violence of the counterattacks. I also abhor the hypocrisy of seeing the former as legitimate and restrained and the latter as evil and unscrupulous. In truth US military campaigns have little of the restrained or moderate about them.

The link between the death of de Menezes and my experience is simply this: the state is violence. It's easy to forget that the origins of the modern state are in the warrior kings of the dark ages who were simply the biggest and nastiest bullies in their areas, and thus able to establish hegemonies. We like to believe that our modern democratic states serve the interests of the people, but their real purpose is self-perpetuation through violent oppression. It takes a harsh reality like the cold-blooded murder of an innocent to tear away the veneer and expose the vicious core.