Plebs! September 25, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in The Left.trackback
There’s so much to find fascinating about the Mitchell/Plebs kerfuflle. There’s Andrew Mitchell, high powered, albeit arguably a back room Tory, who as Chief Whip on his way out of 10 Downing Street is involved in an altercation with the police. Was the term ‘plebs’ used? As noted in the Guardian:
The Sun reported Mitchell as saying: “Best you learn your fucking place. You don’t run this fucking government. You’re fucking plebs.” The newspaper also reported a witness as saying that Mitchell had described police as “morons”.
To paraphrase George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ‘the other guys would never have done that’. And while it’s a small thing – particularly when we gaze at this through the prism of neo-liberalism, it does suggest intriguing class assumptions. It’s not so much the irritation, Gordon Brown was no slouch in that department – famously once stabbing the back of the seat in front of him in a car with his pen and given to egregious rages, so much as the tone, the sense of intrinsic class superiority.
Even if we remove the term ‘plebs’ from the discussion consider the following:
The paper says that Mitchell admitted muttering in earshot of the police: “You guys are supposed to fucking help us.”
That too is replete with significations, hierarchical (they should know their place, which is supportive), relationship wise (the police are supposed to help the Tories/and or politicians) and so on.
As is ‘Best you learn your fucking place.’
Small wonder, as the Guardian reported that Mitchell now disputes the official police report – which implicitly means he’s saying they’re lying. The police – none too pleased with swinging cuts are no doubt happy to make hay. But they’d be entitled to a degree of anger over that raft of assumptions built into the tenor of Mitchell’s words – plebs, or not. This could run and run.
It’s great defining stuff. One wonders will it figure in a Miliband speech coming shortly to a conference not that far from us? Or is it a bit combustible for that and therefore will be left to a second stringer. Either way for a government that already has a problem in regard to the perception that it’s crammed to the gills with toffs (and by the way the LD element, Clegg in particular, doesn’t detract from that impression) this is another brick in a wall that it would rather not see built.
And a last thought on the matter. Also from the Guardian:
Someone swearing at the police (or, indeed, just swearing loudly and repeatedly at anyone) can be arrested under section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act for causing harassment, alarm or distress through ”threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. They can also be arrested under the common law offence of breach of the peace.
Addendum; and so the police log has been posted this morning. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Strange day’s indeed when the police openly conduct a political campaign against a senior Tory minister. It goes to show the austerity agenda is driving cracks even into the coercive arm of the state.
One of the amusing aspects of this controversy has been the attitude of some of the further left. As I’ve said before the attitude to the police in some parts of the UK left is so juvenile as to beggar belief.
Looking on various facebook pages and Twitter feeds it seems many of these putative lefts actually support the Tory minister for bravely standing up to the mailed fist of the state!
Really? There’s no harm in a healthy scepticism about the state and about – as you say – its coercive arm, but the sky has fallen when people will defend a Tory minister… juvenile is precisely the word.
BTW, that’s a very interesting point you raise re the austerity agenda,etc. This crew in No. 10 are, like their peers in the US Republican party, now so detached from reality that the police are just one more subset of the ‘little people who pay taxes’ to paraphrase.
Is it not hopeful, in a perverse sort of sense, that this Tory government, like neo-liberals the world over, are politically blinded by their adherence to economic orthodoxy. I mean one of the key things the Thatcher government did in its first term was give the police a nice payrise, in anticipation of the battles the Tories were planning in the years ahead. This crew of Tories are on a hiding to nothing if they think the cops are going to crack heads to impose austerity while their own families living conditions are deteriorating and their own jobs are under threat. Plans to privatise many police functions, i.e. outside decent public sector jobs to incompetent outfits like G4S, are not only inherently foolish but will push many cops into taking a political position. And it won’t be a political position sympathetic to the Tories. So, while there are good reasons to be hostile to the police it’s poor political judgement to side with the Tories against the police, particularly in this instance.
Some good points there CMK, although you’d get absolutely slaughtered for saying them by most left groups over here
To be fair though no one’s outright saying they support Mitchell against the police. Certainly none of the official left publications or websites are taking that line.
What I do see a lot though is people saying that the police lie all the time, the implication being Mitchell may not in fact have called the police plebs.
This ignores the crux of the political controversy that Wbs highlighted in his article: The naked class hatred the Tories hold even for those members of the “plebs” who in a very real material sense are on their side.
I’ve been on several picket lines where I’ve ended up in conversation with police about the changes that are happening in the force. The cuts in pensions and the privatisations are really having a big impact on their view of the Tories. Several police officers I spoke to say moral is at an all time low. There’s a ballot of the police federation coming up requesting full trade union rights in the next few months. Every police officer I’ve spoken to expect it to be passed overwhelmingly.
Mind you nearly all of them think it won’t make a blind bit of difference, that there is nothing they can do and that they have to obey the commands of senior officers, including getting rough occasionally with pickets, so don’t expect mass mutinies from the police any time soon!
That said there are definite cracks in the police that, at the very least, are a complicating factor for the Tories austerity agenda.
If you want the biggest example of the effect this is having on the coercive arm of the British state just look at the recent TUC Conference Resolution #5 calling on the TUC to “consider the practicalities of calling coordinated strike action” against austerity (i.e. a General Strike). That motion, which was passed by a huge margin was written and moved by the Prison Officers Association, a union that is currently banned from taking strike action but has twice taken illegal strike action in defiance of the government.
By the way, don’t think the actions of the POA have gone unnoticed by the police.
One to watch in the UK: The PCC elections in November and watch Labour mop up. Next year Police and Crime Commissioners versus Home Sec. On the doorsteps lots of support for our petition against police privatisation and G4S, and we’re recruiting supporters and members every day. Predict Ed Murphy to win in East Anglia in my stomping ground.