BRITAIN-Trials in Bradford Whose Conspiracy

September 19, 1981 BRITAIN Trials in Bradford: Whose Conspiracy?
Amrit Wilson "THE court system in this country is increasingly becoming a powerful instrument of repression. It is being used to crush the struggle for liberation of oppressed people and not only to crush the conscious revolutionary but to break the rebellious spirit of Black people... And I think that one of the best methods of radicalising an individual today is to have him spend a day in court witnessing the way we are unceasingly railroaded into jails and prisons, Now even the facade of democracy is beginning to fall. Therefore we cannot expect justice from a impressive judicial system and I am sure that an exclusively legalistic approach to my defence would be fatal. So what we have to do is talk about placing the courts themselves on trial." Thus Angela Davis, describing America in 1971; but it might as well have been Britain in 1981. Here too as in, say, Los Angeles of the mid 1960s, intensifying police brutality has led to 'uprisings' in the black community which have been crushed with unprecedented paramilitary violence by the police. In Brixton whole streets have been smashed up in police searches. In Liverpool CS gas bullets have been tired directly at people and young men have been crushed to death by deliberate charges from police vehicles. The 'uprisings' have demonstrated that the black population is the most revolutionary section of the British working class and, in recognition of this as it were, the State has launched a new attack on the black communities (again in striking analogy with the US in the 1960s). To try and silence black political activists they are being charged with conspiracy and imprisoned possibly for life.