Phil: Blair's position is dismal. We should try everything, but I associate Labour with sitting in boring meetings. SO: How did the youth radicalisa. tion get started? Phil: When we started Reclaim the Streets. we instantly had a database of 2,500 people, mainly youth cos of the M1l campaign. We organised a protest against Shell's role in Nigeria and youth who had never thought of international issues prior to the M11 came along. SO: How can we stop car use? Phil: Public transport, freight off the road, mixed use areas, less compulsion to travel. In the Thatcher years there was a presumption that develonment was good if it was profitable. It was cheaper to use green field sites than derelict land in cities - although this leads to more cars. Can capitalism plan the transport system we need? Phil: I don't think capitalism can make the huge changes needed. There can't be an ecologically sustainable capitalist econorv. The anti-roads nrotest attacks consumption for its own sake and therefore is implicitly anti-capitalist. Stopping economic growth is about saying we want to reorder economy according to human need rather than pront. SIMON DEVILLE spoke to Helen Shaw from Inquest which has been campaigning around deaths in custody since 198l. Socialist Outlook- Inquest deals with the system after someone has been killed. How can we try to prevent deaths happening in the first place? Helen- There is a much wider issue than deaths in custody, and that is of racism in the police, which we do take up to an extent, but that really needs to be addressed by the anti-racist movement and the left as a whole.
These deaths are just the tip of an iceberg, we really need to look at the whole way communities are policed, what happens to people who are involved in these killings, the fact that no one has ever been prosecuted (except for one case after a white man was killed in 1979). Socialist Outlook - Has Inquest had to take on the role of an anti-racist organisa. tion in recent years? Helen: inquest always has had that perspec. tive; it doesn't just see black deaths as being amongst a wider number of deaths in custody because there are particular issues of institutionalised racism within the police and the prison service. Inquest isn t purely an anti-racist organisation but we do work very closely with the wider anti-racist movement to bring these issues into the public domain. Socialist Outlook- Has there been an increase in black deaths in custody over the last few years? Helen- No, but what there has been is an increase in awareness amongst black people and possibly amongst the lett.
In our view there is a disproportionate number ofblack people who die in custody after the use of excessive force or through gross medical negligence. Since 1979 there nave been nine verdicts or unlawtul killings in custody. Seven of them were for black people and one was an Irish man. Socialist Outlook- Is the issue of policing something specific to black communities? Helen- There are specific problems faced by all ethnic minority communities but there is also a wider issue-most deaths in custody are of poor working class people.
There is not just a crisis of policing ethnic minority communities but a much wider crisis of policing working class communities as a whole. Socialist Outlook- What should activists be doing in their communities around policing then? Helen- This is a difficult question as there is a big gap.
Where there is a death there is sometimes a campaign, but there is no national group which looks at the wider issue of policing as a whole, of injuries at the hands of police, the enormous increase in actions against the police, the massive sums of money the police are having to pay out in compensation for wrongful arrest, violence from the police and so on.
There is an utter lack of knowledge within the labour movement about the incredible amount of injustice people face after a death in custody. It's easy to understand what a terrible thing it is when someone is killed by the police, but what many people don't understand is the further injustice people face when they try to find out what happened or when they try to bring those responsible to account.
There is no independent complaints system, no form of independent inquiry into deaths in custody and no police accountability.
The left needs to debate how to respond to all of this. It's not really up to Inquest to tell the left what they should be doing. We can merely identify this gap.
Socialist Outlook 104 • June 29,1996. It shares with the Dublin ruling class the desire, as