The debate about the use of stop and search – be it protesters or young black and Asian men, be it in the case of stopping knife crime or deterring terrorism – is one that has (understandably, perhaps) been fixed on the police results rather than the times they get it wrong.
But it is in the cases where they get it wrong that attitudes towards police are sharpened and the rights we feel we have as citizens practically defined. So I offer this card for readers to download, print and carry. It warns police officers that if a stop and search is intrusive, unlawful or malicious, you will pursue the issue through the Independent Police Complaints Commission and, if necessary, to civil proceedings. You might want to offer this card to an officer before a search takes place. Enjoy.
We live in a society in which we are told there is no money and yet see it washing around the upper echelons
Students in Glasgow protest against forthcoming cuts to higher education.
Sometimes you move between worlds too quickly for comfort. I certainly did this week. I went from talking to students staging an occupation at University College London to a pre-Christmas do full of movers and shakers. One group of people were complacent, self-indulgent and had a huge sense of entitlement. And guess what, it wasn’t the students! I wondered just when my generation had got just so bloody complacent.
Paul Lewis, Matthew Taylor and Patrick Wintour – The Guardian – 25th Nov 2010
Police hold protesters back during a mass demonstration in London against tuition fee rises and funding cuts. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Britain’s most senior police officer warned today of a new era of civil unrest as the national campaign against university fee increases and education cuts gathered momentum.
Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said the two large-scale student demonstrations of the past fortnight had been marred by a previously unseen level of violence, adding: “The game has changed.”
Police tactics used against student protesters on Wednesday were condemned as “outrageous and unacceptable yesterday by anti-cuts groups the Coalition of Resistance and National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC).
An estimated 130,000 school, college and university students across Britain participated in the day of action, which saw protesters in London -some as young as 13 – pressed into an area at Whitehall for almost nine hours without access to food, water or toilet facilities.
During a press conference which attracted national and international press, University of London Union president Clare Solomon said that it was “unbelievable that the police do not know the law themselves. Collective punishment was outlawed at the Nuremberg tribunal.”
Websites publish advice to student protesters on how to avoid arrest – Police act to close down anti-authority blog Fitwatch on grounds of ‘criminal’ activities
Paul Lewis, The Guardian, 16th November 2010
More than 70 websites today published guidance to student protesters about avoiding arrest, in defiance of a police ruling that doing so was unlawful.
The anti-police blog Fitwatch was suspended yesterday after detectives from C011, the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the company hosting its website that it was “being used to undertake criminal activities”.
The GDSC supports those protesters who are being criminalised by the British media and state for their just stand against the cuts to our education by the Con-Dem government.
Like the Gaza demonstrators, the students are acting out of a sense of duty to their fellow humans. While the students in this country are not being attacked in the way the people of Gaza were in the war crimes committed against them resulting in 1,500 deaths, many of whom were children, these students are nonetheless defending the right for their younger brothers and sisters to be able to go into higher education.
We wish the student movement all the best, and stand with them in full solidarity and hope that they have all preparations in place for their activism such as legal observers at protests, defence committee set up to defend those criminalised.
The Gaza Demonstrators Support Campaign sends its solidarity to your meeting. It is highly significant that you are raising the topic of the young people imprisoned for protesting in London against Israel’s brutal attack on the people of Gaza at your meeting about the Zionist attack on the Freedom Flotilla. All this is clearly linked. Israel and its international backers are waging war on the people of Palestine and in particular are trying to strangle Gaza by a combination of blockade and starvation on the one hand, and direct massive violence on the other. While obviously this attack is directed overwhelmingly at the Palestinian people themselves, who are resisting heroically, both the attack on the Flotilla and the criminalisation of protesters show that solidarity activists are also under attack and that there is a real need for campaigns to Defend Those who Defend Palestine.
article written by CBGB (ML), and can be found here
—
While a few sentences have been reduced on appeal, those protesting Israel’s war crimes are still being criminalised.
CPGB-ML members were part of the picket outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday 13 July. To date, 26 people, overwhelmingly young, muslim and completely innocent, have been sent to jail for terms as long as two and a half years following protests against the Israeli massacre in Gaza 18 months ago, while 14 others have received non-custodial sentences The picket in the Strand, London was in support of 10 of these Gaza protesters, whose appeals were being heard in the court.
Mark Thomas – The Guardian – 10 February 2009
More than 70 websites today published guidance to student protesters about avoiding arrest, in defiance of a 
