THE SMALL Essex port of Brightlingsea has been turned into a police state after judges ruled that the rights of exporters of live animals must be upheld against popular local protests.
200 police were drafted in, and invoked the Public Order Act to crush the blocking slaughter wagons carrying sheep.
A similar crackdown has also taken place in Dover, where harbour chiefs have been told by a court judgement they have no right to turn away a legal trade This heavy-handed use of the state to ride roughshod over popular mass protest is a stark warning to the labour movement of the powers already vested in the police before they were supplemented by the Criminal Justice Act.