When I left The Mirror all the big campaigns I had been involved in had apparently failed. I used to tell people, ‘Don’t come to me – I always lose.’ Then, one by one, the major cases were reopened and reversed. These included the release of Eddie Browning, who was falsely accused of the murder of Marie Wilkes, in 1994; the quashing of Colin Wallace’s conviction in 1996 and the release of the Bridgewater Four in 1997. So when I was back at Private Eye there was a series of victories in old campaigns, and new campaigns starting. As early as 1994 we raised doubts about the Stephen Lawrence case. In three articles called Sergeants’ Mess we pointed out that Stephen’s murderers were not prosecuted because Duwayne Brooks’s identification of two suspects was rubbished by a police officer who had absolutely no justification in rubbishing him. We also covered the Aitken story and the arms to Iraq affair. Paul Foot, article ‘Tribune of the People’
Five months after the murder, one of Scotland Yard’s senior detectives, Deputy Assistant Commissioner David Osland, now a Tory councillor in Croydon, circulated a memorandum announcing that he was ‘losing patience’ with Neville and Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s parents, and suggesting that the police officers engaged in the murder inquiry should sue the couple for libel. The irony in the notion that police officers who had not brought Stephen’s murderers to justice should secure damages from his parents was plainly lost on Mr Osland. He felt he and his force had been entirely justified by a ‘review’ conducted by a senior detective in London, Detective Chief Superintendent Roderick John Barker. Mr Barker’s ‘review’ which flowed from a secret inquiry and was of course not published, had discovered that the police investigation following the Lawrence murder was almost entirely flawless.
This remained the official police view as the long saga of the hunt for Stephen’s murderers unfolded. Weeks after the murder, five men were arrested. Two were identified by a witness to the murder, Stephen’s friend Duwayne Brookes. But Duwayne’s evidence was tainted – by a police officer who was appointed to drive him home and whose account of the conversation he had with Duwayne (which Duwayne hotly contested) persuaded the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the charges.
Angry and disillusioned, the Lawrence family took out a private prosecution against three of the men. The prosecution failed – largely because of the ‘tainting’ of Duwayne Brookes’s evidence by his police escort. An inquest jury proclaimed unequivocally that Stephen had been murdered in an unprovoked racist attack. The Daily Mail (in a sudden fit of conscience brought on by the fact that Neville Lawrence had once painted the house of the Mail editor) named the five original suspects and denounced them as the murderers. In spite of all this, the position five years on is that the murderers of Stephen Lawrence are still at large. Paul Foot, article ‘A Groundswell of Anger and Dismay’
Policeman bursts from bushes in dark glasses and seizes hand ringing doorbell: Ho ho ho. Ha ha ha ha. Well, Mr Sambo Darko Coon. I’ve got your number. You’re nicked.
White man: What ever is the matter, officer?
Policeman: Ho ho ho ho. Dear me, don’t we talk lovely, Mr Rastas Chocklet drop. Now, listen here, son. I’ve had a month’s training with the SAS. I could chop both your arms off and leave no trace. Lord Scarman will never know ... [removes glasses] I thought you was a nigga. Carry on. The Young Ones s1e3: Boring, BBC 1982
We Take Absolutely Anyone. The Young Ones s2e2: Cash ***** rozzers’ poster
I don’t want to bring the evening down or anything but er well basically you’re all under arrest. ibid. Neil as rozzer, sent to bust friend’s party
The past record of the British police in catching and honestly convicting the real perpetrators of bombings in the UK is appalling. Instead, in numerous cases it has been shown that police deliberately tampered with evidence, forced confessions out of suspects and withheld information that would clear them ... The Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, Judith Ward, Danny McNamee. Ludicrous Diversion: 7/7 Bombings
In the most extraordinary and draconian expansion of their powers ever seen in the UK, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act came into power in 2005. The provision you may have heard about in the media was Section 132: the restriction to demonstrate within one kilometre of Parliament Square, obviously an essential tool in fighting organised crime. The first conviction under the Act was in December 2005 after Mia Evans was arrested for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in the Iraq War under the Cenotaph without permission. Since when was peaceful protest a serious organised crime? But the more important Section of the Act, and one that was barely mentioned by the mainstream media, was the changes made to the powers of arrest used by the police. From New Year’s Day 2006 the police can now arrest you for any offence at all, including dropping litter or not wearing a seatbelt. Indeed, according to the actual wording of the Act, the police can even arrest you ‘to enable the name of the person to be ascertained’. ibid.
In the next two hours you will see hard-core documentation, evidence that is irrefutable, that America is turning into a nightmarish police state. Cameras on the street corners, mass checkpoints on our major interstate highways, warrantless searches. But worst of all you’ll see America’s military being perverted, being turned into an instrument of control, not an instrument of defense. I have footage, and you’re going to see it of marines engaged in mock gun confiscations, kicking in doors, setting up concentration camps, and working with foreign troops from China, Russia, Britain, Australia. It’s incredible, my friends, and you’ve got to face up to it. I’ve got to face up to it. And we’ve got to take action. Alex Jones, Police State: 2000
The Clinton Administration, supposed liberals, allotted over two billion plus dollars for 1999 alone for nationwide Nazi behaviour. But not just the socialists in the Democratic Party. Oh no. The Republicans and the Supreme Court have been backing warrantless searches. ibid.
The result: the military out serving search warrants in seventy-seven Texas countries ... The military are running check-points random on the nation’s highways ... All of the key indicators of a nation in massive decline are being manifested before our eyes. Alex Jones, Police State II: The Takeover
Characteristics of a Police State: The state is government by a separate elite, who may or may not be elected, and who are ‘above’ the law. Individual is there to serve the state not the state the individual. The state is the law and the state controls the legal process. There is no such thing as a fair trial. People can be imprisoned without trial. Propaganda for the state takes precedence over the truth and a free press. All newspapers and media are state controlled. The police are above the law and can stop, search and arrest you at any time without further legal process. The state maintains and funds extensive intelligence, security and police organisations to spy on its citizens. The state controls education and the syllabus of education. Children are ‘brainwashed’ with state aims and propaganda. People are encouraged to spy and report on each other. The state spies on citizens and maintains millions of files on everyone whether innocent, suspect, or a criminal. Torture is an accepted part of the state apparatus in line with the abuse of psychiatric drugs and imprisonment. Brian Gerrish, Alternative View II conference
We’ve got brutal police appearing ... I believe the police are being put through training which is neuro-linguistic programming. Brian Gerrish, lecture British Constitution Group 2009, ‘The State of the Nation’
[photo] Cleveland mother after police smash into her home, CS gas/pepper spray her and arrest her … She needed hospital treatment then released without charge. Brian Gerrish, lecture Alternative View conference V, ‘Common Sense: The Antidote to the Common Purpose’
Noddy Guide to Creating a Police State … Encourage and breed corruption in police … Create a private unaccountable company ACPO … Lower recruiting standards and pension off corrupt criminal coppers … Politicise the police and introduce Common Purpose … Permit thuggish haircuts and excessive tattoos … Training to lower empathy … Back door privatise policing … Allow media to hide police crimes … Arming police with lethal weapons … Install secret courts … Imprison police officers who whistleblow … Good police men and women ‘mentally reframed’ … ibid.
I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them. Alfred Hitchcock
Those of you who are here today observing an absolutely historic event [deployment of US troops on US streets] are witnessing an absolutely historic event. The soldiers you see before you represent not the past but the future. It is through exercises such as this that truly we can create a New World Order. General John J Sheehan, Nato Supreme Commander
Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off. Tommy Cooper
The system itself is the problem. We are trying to fight twenty-first century crime – anti-social behaviour, drug-dealing, binge-drinking, organised crime – with nineteenth century methods. Tony Blair
We are not living in a police state. Tony Blair
Scotland Yard: Its Mysteries And Methods ... A clever and cunning man, having his wits about him and with plenty of money at his command, can always impose upon the unwary and make believe he is engaged in a revolutionary crusade, when his real object is to sell the liberty of his dupes at the highest possible price. Patrick McIntyre
In a series of embarrassing revelations in the 1970s and 1980s the British author Martin Short established that the Scotland Yard Vice Squad and senior CID officers were all Masons, and taking bribes from pornographers in London’s Soho. Martin Short estimates that one in six British police officers are Masons. And that there are approximately 600,000 Freemasons in Britain today. Many Freemasons occupy highly paid jobs at local borough councils across Britain which often have Masonic temples inside council buildings maintained at the taxpayers’ expense. Chris Everard, Illuminati I