Stockwell shooting – a licence to kill

The decision not to prosecute the police involved in the execution of the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes while he sat reading a newspaper on a Tube train in July 2005 is no surprise.

Hiding behind “insufficient evidence” cannot obscure the state’s response to the shooting. De Menezes’ killing is well documented, despite the best efforts of the Metropolitan Police and its commissioner Sir Ian Blair to muddy the waters with disinformation and to prevent an independent inquiry. Bringing charges under health and safety law only add insult to injury.

Long before this shooting, the police force was above and beyond the law that applies to any ordinary citizen when it comes to killing other people. No policeman in England and Wales, for example, has ever been successfully prosecuted for killing someone in the “course of his duty”.

The two officers who shot De Menezes eight times without warning or attempts to detain him were simply carrying out their orders and acting in “good faith”, the official story goes. After all, it is said, he could have been a suicide bomber. We should, therefore, blame the terrorists and not the police, insist New Labour politicians from Tony Blair to London Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Police are part of a state machine that rules over society and its citizens rather than serving them in a direct, accountable way. Their main function is to uphold the status quo and enforce government policies, especially in times of crisis. That is why they have this privileged position when it comes to wilful violence against others.

To retain the loyalty of the police – as well as the armed forces – the state provides a legal immunity. For the sake of form, the Crown Prosecution Service spent six months considering the case. There was clearly no way that the Director of Public Prosecutions was going to allow the case to go forward. The state has thus confirmed that its servants - from London to Basra - enjoy a licence to kill.

In July 2005, prime minister Blair said the “rules of the game” had changed. The inescapable logic is that all of us are legitimate targets in the eyes of the state. After all, how can the police tell any of us apart from suicide bombers?

What we are witnessing is the emergence of an out-of-control state, presided over by a tainted big business government. Its demonisation of Muslim communities, arbitrary police actions against protest, the abolition of basic human rights, detention without trial – all are intended to frighten people while acting as a recruiting campaign for new suicide bombers.

No number of public or judicial inquiries can alter the essential nature of the existing state or make it less violent. The best way to remember Jean Charles de Menezes is to build a momentum for a new, democratic state that is directly accountable to and controlled by its citizens.

19 July 2006