State repression across Europe

The youth protesters in Spain have inspired many with the stand they have taken against austerity policies and the political establishment. However, they have also faced brutal state repression.

The youth protesters in Spain have inspired many with the stand they have taken against austerity policies and the political establishment. However, they have also faced brutal state repression.

 

In order to clear the Plaza de Catalunya, the central square of Barcelona, of protesters, hundreds of police surrounded and waded into the crowd in an unprovoked attack on peaceful protesters. The youth have since regrouped and retaken the Plaza. However, these events show the danger the state poses to movements which challenge the current system.

This kind of repression will also be used against movements of young people and workers in Ireland. We have already seen the willingness of the state to shut down the centres of Dublin and Cork to facilitate the Queen’s visit. Brutal police violence has been used against the Shell to Sea campaigners in Rossport and against the student protests in Dublin last year. Meanwhile, the criminals in the banks whose greed helped bring the country to economic ruin have been left untouched by the forces of “law and order”.

The fact that state repression is used consistently against movements which oppose the status quo is no coincidence. Under capitalism, the police and other forces of the state are not democratically accountable to working class people. The state is a reflection of a society run in the interests of a super-rich minority. It ultimately serves to defend these interests and the capitalist system itself. This is a reality for which the Left and the workers movement must prepare, both politically and by being organised to deal with state repression. Where the police are used to break up protests or workers actions, as happened during the Thomas Cook workers occupation, the workers movement should be prepared to organise a democratic defence of these movements.

While being ready to oppose all attempts at state repression, the socialist movement should also recognise that there are real divisions at the heart of the state, and rank-and-file police will also be affected by the capitalist crisis. This can have a political impact. Part of the role of the workers’ movement must also be to attempt to exploit these divisions to split the state along class lines.

Socialist Youth calls for a genuinely accountable police force under the total democratic control of communities. This can only be achieved on the basis of a socialist society where wealth and power is taken into the hands of working class people.

Total
0
Shares
Previous Article

15-M movement opens gates to new stage of struggle

Next Article

We need working class fighters not gender quotas!

Related Posts

Minimum wage cut?

By Laura Fitzgerald

EVERYONE KNOWS the minimum wage is paltry and it’s not enough to live on. Many young people up to the age of 20 have an even lower minimum wage, as miserable as €6.06 per hour for some. Yet each time we hear the oft-repeated mantra of “We must regain competitiveness” from the spokespersons for big and small businesses and right-wing politicians it is now increasingly accompanied by calls for the lowering of the minimum wage.

The Quick Food Service Alliance which includes McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and Abrakebabra, have had the gall to launch a legal challenge to the minimum wage and to the compulsion to pay over-time rates on a Sunday!

Read More

Love Parade catastrophe was preventable

Did the organizers stop at nothing for profits?

20 people died in the horrific stampede at the July 24 Love Parade festival in the German city of Duisburg, 500 were injured and, for a time, over 1 000 people were officially listed as missing. The revellers panicked at a tunnel entrance. But, already in the build up to the parade many thought there was a risk of mass panic developing.