Photo: CARLOS AUGUSTO GUARITA (Photon)
WILLIE WHITELAW has made a major climbdown on the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. He has been forced by a lobby of doctors and the churches to backtrack on aspects of the Bill dealing with police access to professional records. He may also give in to the Journalists who are anxious that unpublished material and notebooks could be seized by the police as evidence against a suspect. But those parts of the Bill centrally affecting street policing will remain untouched.
• The Bill is not intended church, assault the medical profesSON. even to limit the activities of journalists.
It is intended to give the police powers to control the population of incutes. LIe Dack Collmunity and working people who are bearing the brunt of Tory austerity.
The Bill follows all the antidemocratic legislation that has been mounting throughout the seventies ana Into tne eignues — ine Prevention of Terrorism Act, Tebbit's law and the immigration acts.
Photo: GM COOKSON It is of a Tory second term of - with rising unemployment, the col lapse of the Health Serice, erosintinueducation continued stepped-up use of anti-union legislation the discontent of working people will rise to an all-time high.
The Police Bill, tied in with the sophisticated armoury the police have accumulated in the past years, will enable the dissent of working DCUBIC in manv wavs. though. the Bill merely legitimises of policing the black community has suffered from for years now.
The Job, the paper of the Metropolitan Police states that the Bill is merely police practice converted into legislation'.
Clause 1 of the Bill gives police officer power 'to stop and search someone reasonably suspected or carrying Call offensive weapon or ticles which could be used for theft and burglary'.
As even a comb could be an offensive weapon within the terms OI the Bill, the police will be provided with an excuse to stop and search at will.
Courteney Griffiths, a black barrisie! member of the GLC Police Committee, pointed out that this sort of 'stop and was exacuy wildl was during the SWAMP which led directly to the Brixton riots.
Clauses 9 and 10 give the police powers to search premises not only of the of democracy soap opera.' suspect, but of her or his family and friends. This SULl police is what the White of activity the family in Hackney were subjected to They took the police to court and won. In summing up, Justice Mars-Jones decribed the police activities as 'monstrous, wicked, shameful conduct'.
If the Bill is passer such conduct will longer be 'monstrous' but legal. Truth The Bill involves fundamental shift in the DEILISO legal method. Courteney Griffiths describes British justice as an 'adversary system not interested DUT merely in the relative strengths of opposing cases.
The Bill will restrict access to a lawyer, let the police hold suspects without charge for up, to four days, allow as evidence contessions gailed under duress.
of destroying the very brink tabric Photo: GM COOKSON 'And now an award to a great bunch of Chief Constables for their ongoing role in the great My men are a faultless body of individuals constantly under attack from the barbaric hordes of communist militants and subversives who TV DRAMA AWARE are on the