Kill the Bill! No Police State!

The Tory Bill is part of a global drive towards a police state. Dictators the world over are destroying democracy – in Hong Kong, Myanmar, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and a dozen other places. In so-called democracies, too, right-wing regimes are cracking down.

Yellow Vest protestors faced batons, tear gas, and water cannon on the streets of Paris in late 2019. Black Lives Matter protestors in the States were met by militarised police backed by armed fascist militia last summer. Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel ordered a police attack on a women’s vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common in March.

All these regimes are also peddling nationalism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.

Why is this happening? Because the world capitalist system is in deep crisis and faces growing resistance from below.

Carbon pollution is destroying the Earth’s ecology. Agribusiness is breeding deadly diseases. The corporations are hoovering up the world’s wealth. A tiny class of billionaires is becoming richer and richer. The great majority face bullshit jobs, low pay, unaffordable housing, rising prices, mounting debts, decaying services.

That’s why the anger keeps exploding into mass protest. Then they send in the police to smash the resistance and keep the world safe for corporate plunder and ecological devastation.

The Tories are mired in sleaze and corrupt crony capitalism. If we build the protests into a summer of discontent, we can force them to withdraw the Bill.

But we need to do much more. We need to beat back the drive towards a police state. We need to turn our battle for democracy into a battle against the system as a whole. We need a red-green revolution from below to create a new world based on democracy, equality, peace, and sustainability.

Check out Anti*Capitalist Resistance at www.anticapitalistresistance.org. Join us to learn about the Paris Commune of 1871 – the world’s first experiment in popular democracy, 150 years ago this month. 12noon to 4pm, Saturday 15 May. Register via website.