Arrested on December 17th (day after Mangrove trial ended) and charged with obstructing the free passage of traffic with a car and assaulting P. C. Saunders.
PROSECUTION STORY P. C. Saunders and P. C. Pugh were walking down Portobello Road and saw a car parked at an angle, causing an obstruction. They did not know whose car it was. When the owner, Rhodan, returned to the car Saunders asked him to move it. Rhodan refused, was unneorssarily impolite, and as a crowd gathered round, assaulted Saunders as he was being held, biting his finger and bruising his knee. Pugh (a witness in the Mangrove trial) radioed for help and Rhodan was taken to Notting Hall Police Station and charged. At the station Rhodan made a statement in which he said that Saunders and Pugh had abused him in the past, and that the incident proved what he had said the day before at the Old Bailey concerning suspended sentences and the way they work against black people. Saunders denied having seen or spoken to Rhodan before and denied assaulting him at the police station. (Cross summonses against Saunders, Pugh and Sgt. French have been taken out by Rhodan, but have yet to be heard.)
The other police evidence confirmed Saunders' story.
DEFENCE CASE Rhodan was on the way to the Old Bailey do collect some papers on the Mangrove trial. He stopped to pick up a friend, parking the car in Oxford Gardens, close to the kerb and away from the corner. He left another friend in the car and was gone for about fifteen minutes. When he came back Saunders came up to him saying something about him having a new car. Rhodan asked "Which car? What are you talking about?" and Sunders replied "the one with the fucking monkey sitting in it". Rhodan asked "What's wrong with you? and Saunders replied, "Never mind what's wrong with me, you fucking move it". Rhodan then realised that Saunders was just using the car as a lactic to provoke him.
Saunders and Pugh then grabbed Rhodan and pushed him against a parked car. A crowd gathered, some of them taking photographs, telling the policemen to leave Rhodan alone, that they had seen what happened and that he had done nothing. Rhodan denied biting Saunders's finger or attempting to knee him in the groin. He was held while Pugh radioed for assistance and then taken to Notting Hill Station, While he was in the charge room he was assaulted by Saunders, Pugh and French-Saunders stamped on his foot and called him "black cunt" before being dragged away by another officer. After he left the station, he received treatment in hospital for injuries to his foot, and bruised ribs. A medical report testifying to these injuries was read out at the trial.
The prosecution claimed that Rhodan had set up the whole incident to prove his point about suspended sentences. Rhodan denied this saying that it was ridiculous and insulting and that he wouldn't spend 11 weeks in the Old Bailey under those mental pressures, and end up with a sentence of fear, just to provoke an incident with the police the next day. Rogers, the prosecutor, then suggested that Rhodan was out to get publicity so as to keep his position as a leader, and produced copies of Frendz, Private Eye, and the Kensington Post, all with pictures of Rhodan with a bandaged foot in them. Rhodan replied that he hadn't asked for publicity and to a suggestion that the bandage on his foot was just for effect replied that he had left it to the people at the hospital and he should ask them about the bandage.
Other defence witnesses gave very similar accounts of the incident.
VERDICT Guilty of obstruction: fined £5. Case dismissed on the charge of assault. The magisThe Red Mole 12 March 1972 Pans 12 trate, Anthony Babington, who convicted Rhodan of an assault charge two years ago (when reminded of this, he said he couldn't remember the case but wouldn't have taken the present case if he'd known), said that he could find no substance in Rhodan's allegation of a police vendetta against him. Rhodan is appealing against the conviction on the obstruction charge.
COMMENTS The case was yet another example of police fabrication with the aim of intimidating local militants. The fact that the magistrate found the police evidence on the assault charge insufficient merely reflects the incompetence of Saunders, Pugh and Co., and the fortunate presence of several members of the public at the scene. On the other hand, the conviction on the obstruction charge demonstrates the usual bias of magistrates towards accepting police evidence.
Whether the incident was the result of an initiative taken by Pugh and Saunders themselves or whether the suggestion to frame Rhodan on a suitable charge came from higher up in the Notting Hill police hierarchy we don't know. But either way the (hoped for) result was the same. All the senior officers who gave evidence, from Chief Insp. Radford downwards felt obliged to support Saunders and Pugh's story. There are many ways in which the racism of the police force operates. It might take the form of an organised attack like the raid on the Metro Club; or it might take the form of the harassment of individual black people by racist cops who know they will be backed up by their colleagues.
As an institution, the police force attracts racist individuals, but also produces and reinforces racism in many others. This being the case the harassment of black people will operate through the initiative of individual policemen as well as from orders coming from higher up. (The same thing also applies of course to other minority groups). In fighting the acts of individual racist policemen, we are also fighting the institutional racism of the whole police force, and it is the latter and not the individual policemen which must be seen as the main enemy. And in fighting the police as an institution, we must remember that they are only one element of the repressive apparatus of the State, whose overall function is the maintenance of the capitalist order, and whose destruction and replacement by new forms is the ultimate objective of political struggle.
B. W. ¡ LIAISON COMMITTEE SLATE FOR NUS ELECTIONS The Easter NUS Conference in Birmingham will see an election fought (in the main) between two alternative slates. The C.P. dominated (indeed packed) left caucus refused any alliance with the Liaison Committee for the Defense of Students' Union (LCDSU) at its traditional pre-conference meeting. It would neither accept the United Front demands of the LCDSU as a basis for a principled alliance, nor the autonomy motion (the so-called amendment 9) passed at the special January NUS Conference, as an initial basis and springboard for more general agreement. In that situation, the LCDSU decided to offer an alternative slate and to fight for the allegiance of the left at the Birmingham Conference.
The LCDSU is potentially in rather a strong position. The next period will reveal quite clearly that the only position which will ensure a continuing fight for autonomy will be that offered by the LCDSU: the only alternative will be a Scab Union. At this conference, however, this will not be at all clear. What is required in this situation is not a retreat to half truths and guarded statements, but a clear and precise explanation of the positions of the LCDSU. This will a fortiori be the case in the elections, especially given the confusion as to who really does represent the left-wing of the NUS.
The International Marxist Group and the I.S. are major forces within the colleges, building and supporting the LCDSU. Most of the positions on the question of autonomy were originally worked out by the I.M.G. It is a fruitless and self defeating task to try to hide the major role which these two groups play within the LCDSU. However, for reasons termed "credibility" a majority of the Steering Council decided to remove representatives of, in particular, the IMG from leading positions on the slate. The argumentation of all sides (the I.S. included) revealed that the proposers of this move had not broken in any way from the C.P. methodology of pushing reputedly left" students'leaders to expound the views of the real actors in the situation, who would operate behind the scenes, as it were. (in this case, at the bottom of the slate).
Secondly, the IMG was not convinced that some of the people proposed for the top positions had actually proved themselves in struggle and certainly all had not been consistently involved in building and defending the LCDSU.
It would be utterly disastrous if the LCDSU became simply an alternative electoral machine for "left" student bureaucrats.
Given this political approach to the coming elections, together with the obviously unrepresentative makeup of the slate in relation to the forces inside theLCDSU, the IMG comrades could only give critical support to such a slate and were not prepared to participate organisationally in it. The question of elections is not, of course, a principled issue but a matter of tactics. Consequently, the IMG will continue to support and build the LCDSU whilst remaining critical of this particular slate.
J. R. Clynes ANTI-INTERNMENT LEAGUE TRADE UNION CONFERENCE A trade union conference held by the AntiInternment League on Sunday, 5 March, attracted well over 100 people, including 90 trade unionists from 18 different unions.
The conference was like a curate's egg-good in parts. Mike Cooley, president of the technical section of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, made an excellent speech pointing out that any defeated suffered by British imperialism in Ireland would represent a substantial victory for the British working class. He also agreed with a speaker from the Irish Solidarity Campaign that no campaign in this country which failed to come out in clear support of the IRA could be built on the necessary effective basis-a class basis. Another excellent speaker was Dermot Kelly of People's Democracy, who spoke about the Northern Resistance Movement and also stressed the necessity to side clearly with the IRA in the present struggle.
Unfortunately, however, the attitude persisted that politics and "practical proposals were two totally different topics. A suggesment to eradicate its latent chauvinism by stressing the need to support the IRA was ruled out of order. Instead all that came out of the conference was arrangements for co-ordination and committees. These are, of course, necessary-but the fact remains that unless the politics of our response to the Irish struggle are discussed seriously, and keyed in consciously to our intervention in the labour movement, then we may well ask: co-ordination for what?
CARTER FORCED TO HAND IN RESIGNATION As a result of the publication in The Red Mole of the kill-Angela-Davis letter by Bradford immigrant centre's racialist headmaster, Mr. Nick Carter, he has handed in his resignation.
The Sunday Times picked up the story. Carter told them he was particularly puzzled that anyone should think he's unsympathetic to immigrants. "In Bradford I'm a kind of father-figure-like a District Officer in the Colonial Service".
In a letter of resignation circulated to his staff Carter blamed "Marxists and sympathisers in our midst who resort to gutter actions". The unfavourable publicity led to a Bradford City Councillor suggesting that Carter should apologise. Carter decided that he couldn't continue working for an authority which "would consider such a cowardly course of action". His successor, a Mr. Fitzpatrick, will no doubt be more discreet in his public announcements. No change, however, is expected in Bradford's racialist immigrant education system. IMG & S.L. FUSION CONFERENCE: 27th, 28th, 29th May, 1972.
The National Committee of the International Marxist Group, British Section of the Fourth International, meeting on 26th and 27th February, 1972 scheduled the next National Conference for the 27th, 28th and 29th May, 1972. There have already been two separate delegate conferences of the IMG and Spartacus League respectively to discuss the fusion of the two organisations, both of which agreed by overwhelming majorities to build a common organisation. The February meeting of the National Committee also accepted a perspectives document entitled "Building the Fourth International in Britain." As the pre-conference discussion has been started, The Red Mole will in future issues be carrying material reflecting the debates within the organisation.
IRISH SOLIDARITY DEFENCE FUND Well over a hundred people were arrested or the Irish demonstration in London on the Saturday after the Derry massacre. Many more have been arrested in other post-Derry demonstrations elsewhere These arrests were the result of deliberate and continuous provocation by the police forces. Their aim was simple, and similar in many ways to that of the British troops in Derry,-to intimidate and deter people from coming out in support of the Irish It is necessary now to show very clearly that the State will fail in this aim, that it cannot prevent the growth of a solidarity movement here, in the imperialist heartland. But it will only fail if we can show ourselves capable of defending those who come out on such demonstrations, and ensuring that they suffer the minimum disruption to their lives as a result of the intimidatory actions of the State. The Irish Solidarity Defence Fund has been set up for this purpose, to help offset the considerable costs which are being incurred by those appearing in the courts as a result of those demonstrations. We appeal to all those who support the right to demonstrate in support of the Irish struggle to give generously to this fund; the alternative is likely success for the State in its attempt to intimidate those demonstrating, and thus prevent the growth of a significant Irish solidarity movement in this country.
Postal Orders and Cheques should be made out to the "Irish Solidarity Defence Fund' and sent c/o 37 Gordon Mansions, Torrington Place, London W.C.1. All contributions will be acknowledged.