I’ve noticed a number of times over recent decades that the
British police are occasionally wont to forget that they are the servants of
the people, not the brutal guard dogs of whichever government is ruling the
Establishment in ways designed to further
its ideological shibboleths. Their behaviour during the miners’ strikes in the
Thatcherite 80s was a prime example, and we’ve seen some more of it recently.
So what do I now read in Gorky Park?
Our intrepid Chief Investigator Renko is reading a book entitled Political Oppression in the United States, 1929-1941. He comes across an account of the 1930 Union Square Rally in New York City – a mass protest against rampant unemployment – during which the NY Police Commissioner used every foul means possible to break up the rally and punish the ‘guilty.’ The final lines report the Commissioner’s bigoted justification for his actions, and finishes with an observation:
His statement typified the contradictory roles of police in a capitalist society: one role as keeper of the peace conflicting with its paramount role as headbreaking watchdog of the exploiter class.
Things don’t change much, do they?
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