La Police has certhe last of Blair h by misadventhe coroners' d no one, since dentified as the murderer connamed. ns continue. In is last weekend, SPG inspector r the investigawhat the cops Il magistrates ns to deny: that View Rd on 23 jo run a gauntlet LTAS spoke to SHERIDAN hs of Britain's THE shape of things to come? West Germany's riot police call it that. regular officers.
Uprising not to turn up for duty.
grafted into neighbourhood filth.
to go on?
worn out from repeated use. ed in the Metropolitan Police force, and there are now six units totalling 204 officers. Apart from Southall, their exploits have included the Red Lion Square anti-fascist demonstration in '74 where Kevin Gately was killed by the cops, and the Grunwick picket in September they weighed in with truncheons and boots, and saturation policing in Lambeth, which involved imposing a virtual curfew on black people.
In addition to the Metropolitan Police, a total of 23 regional forces now have SPG-type units, drawn from the uniformed branch and then especially equipped and trained and under an independent chain of command - if you can But there is more to the 'third force' structure than meets the eye. Phil Kelly of State Research points to the plan for each of the 284 police divi. sions in England and Wales to have what are known as PSUs — police support units. These are made up of cops who receive similar training to the SPG, but remain part of their division as In the black uprising in Bristol in April, only SPGs and PSUs were called on to put down the disturbance. Ordinary police officers were told Then there is a further tier of anti-riot police which has just come to light - STUs, , shield trained units. A third of the Metropolitan Police force has so far received this training. Phil Kelly argues that Britain's third force is being carefully the ranks of your friendly In the Britain of declining living standards, normal service won't ever be resumed — this side of the revolution. And the models the police have PC Bint, one of the witnesses at the Blair Peach inquest, told the coroners' court that he had Nazi regalia at home and a night stick given to him by an American cop. The latter had made a present of his long truncheon because it was