The Guardian
And The
de Menezes Killing
By Chris Marsden
and Julie Hyland
23 August 2005
World
Socialist Web
New
leaks from official sources in Britain have added to the evidence already
brought to light, proving that the official story of how Brazilian Jean
Charles de Menezes was gunned down was a pack of lies. In response,
the liberal daily newspaper the Guardian has rushed to the defence of
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, justifying the use of
death squads and excusing a cover-up aimed at concealing how the police
murdered an innocent man.
De Menezes was shot
at Stockwell underground station on July 22. The police claimed that
he had left the home of a suspected terrorist wearing an overcoat on
a sunny day, arousing suspicions that he was concealing a bomb. They
claimed that on entering the station the young worker had attempted
to escape police, jumping a ticket barrier, before being overpowered
and shot multiple times in the head, a tactic prescribed by new police
procedures to prevent possible suicide attacks.
Numerous eyewitness
statements were published in the press, testifying to these supposed
facts and Sir Ian Blair made an official statement to the same effect.
The documents leaked
by someone connected with the Independent Police Complaints Commission
(IPCC) investigation into the shooting disproved every claim in this
scenario. De Menezes had left his own home wearing a light jacket and
had not run away. He did not even know that he was being followed. Rather,
after sitting down on the train, he was grabbed, restrained and shot
seven times in the head at point-blank range.
The leak sparked
a major political crisis. Further revelations came thick and fast. It
transpired that Blair had blocked the normally automatic convening of
an IPCC inquiry for five days. Officers had been dispatched to Brazil
in an attempt to secure the silence of the de Menezes family. It is
also alleged that police had supplied misleading information to the
pathologist investigating the cause of de Menezes death in order to
support their version of events.
At the weekend,
news reports of further leaks confirmed the police knew de Menezes represented
no immediate threat when he was assassinated. Senior police
sources told the Observer newspaper (the Sunday edition of the Guardian)
that members of the surveillance team who followed de Menezes
into Stockwell underground station in London felt that he was not about
to detonate a bomb, was not armed and was not acting suspiciously. It
was only when they were joined by armed officers that his threat was
deemed so great that he was shot seven times.
Sources said
that the surveillance officers wanted to detain de Menezes, but were
told to hand over the operation to the firearms team, according
to the article published August 21.
A police source
was quoted as saying, Nothing he did gave the surveillance team
the impression that he was carrying a device.
These revelations
confirm that someone at the highest level had taken the decision to
implement a shoot-to-kill policy using the pretext provided by the July
7 terror bombings in London. When the opportunity presented itself to
do so one day after another failed bomb attempt, de Menezes was the
unfortunate victim.
But the immediate
response of the Guardian to the revelations has been to question the
motives of the source of the IPCC leak and to insist that matters should
be allowed to take their proper course. An August 18 editorial stated:
There are always two questions that should be asked about any
leaked document. One is what it contains. The other is what the leaker
hopes to achieve.
The Guardian was
indifferent to what had been revealed and hostile only to the source
of the leak. It stated that it would have been better if the dramatic
details of the Independent Police Complaints Commissions investigation
into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes had not been leaked. They
should have been allowed to emerge in the full report, based on all
the evidence, which the IPCC is currently drawing up.... Those who want
justice to be done, as opposed to those with other agendas, must be
careful.
This defence of
the IPCCs integrity is extraordinary. It comes after whitewashes
by parliamentary bodies and judicial inquirieswhose bona fides
were also supposed to guarantee an independent investigationinto
the circumstances surrounding the beginning of the war against Iraq
and the death of whistleblower Dr. David Kelly.
After these experiences,
anyone concerned with democratic rights need not question the personal
integrity of the IPCCs members to oppose the notion that one should
rely on the good graces of such a state body to establish justice. Moreover,
given that a massive cover-up has been mounted over de Menezess
death, any newspaper would welcome leaks from whatever quarter exposing
the facts. The motive of whoever leaked the document is entirely secondary
to the publics right to know. This is particularly the case under
conditions where estimates of when the IPCC will finally issue its report
on de Menezes range from three months to two years.
But the Guardian
went even further. The outrage over the exposures felt in Britain and
Brazil naturally led to demands for Ian Blair to resign. This provoked
its first defence of Blair, which was soon to lead on to a vicious attack
on the de Menezes family and their supporters.
The newspaper insisted
that it is premature and demagogic to call for this or that person
to resign or to be prosecuted. This is a statement of stupefying
arrogance and indifference to human life. The police bullets pumped
into Jean Charles de Menezes were also premature. He was
executed summarily without having a chance even to protest his innocence.
The Guardian shows more concern that a police official might lose his
job than that a young man lost his life.
This was a foretaste
of things to come. On August 20, the Guardian dismissed calls for Commissioner
Blairs resignation as premature and not substantiated either.
Matters were being fully investigated and the facts would
eventually be laid before the public by the IPCC. At
that stage, competent authorities [emphasis added] will decide if there
are legal charges to answer and a meaningful public assessment can be
made about wider issuesincluding Sir Ians responsibilities.
The Guardian then
went on the attack, claiming that the current level of preoccupation
in some quarters with the iniquity of the De Menezes shooting is beginning
to verge on the obsessive, is in danger of becoming politicised and
increasingly lacks an appropriate sense of context.
The editorial essentially
maintained that the police were guilty only of wrongly identifying de
Menezes as a terrorist. But the unnecessary killing of a man already
under restraint was entirely justified by the continuing threat of terrorism.
If they had been right, they might have been heroes, the
newspaper proclaimed.
Blair does
not have the luxury of only being concerned about the tragic Brazilian.
Justice is being done, not perfectly and not without false starts, but
done nevertheless. In such circumstances, it is a misjudgment, and perhaps
even a mischief, to demand Mr. Blairs head. It smacks of politically
motivated interference.
Rejecting the mounting
evidence of a cover-up, the editorial concluded that it would
be inhuman and would lack common sense to pretend that negligence or
something more sinister were the only possible explanations for
de Menezess death. But the public understands, even if some
people seem sometimes to forget, that weand, on our behalf, the
policeare faced by murderous fanatics.
The Guardian only
repeats the claim by Prime Minister Tony Blair that essential democratic
rights must now be swept away if terrorism is to be defeated. This,
together with an unquestioning defence of the machinery of the state,
is the essential message it seeks to promote.
Despite leading
with the news that police have said de Menezes posed no danger before
he was shot, the Observer also defended Blair and the police. Its only
concern is that the exposures of official lies will undermine the standing
of the police: For whatever reason, lies and misinformation about
the actions, demeanour and even character of Mr. de Menezes were allowed
to circulate. Judgments were hasty, clarifications too slow.... What
is at stake is more than one mans integrity: the killing by police
of an innocent commuter goes to the heart of British democracy.
This statement is
absolutely correct. The state execution of an innocent man, the official
adoption of a shoot-to-kill policy and the raft of other repressive
measures being brought in under the guise of fighting terrorism represent
a far graver threat to democratic rights and the interests of working
people than a handful of terrorists ever could.
Far from opposing
this threat, both the Observer and the Guardian offer up a rationale
for police state measures and insist that people remain politically
passive in the face of this offensive. Their injunction is that the
police must be given the benefit of the doubt, something that was never
granted to de Menezes.
The Observer merely
calls for cosmetic changes to how draconian policing measures are presented
to the public. The police force must have a figurehead trusted
by officers and public alike, Blair must change his style
radically and learn to trust the public by explaining
exactly what powers the police now have.
Readers should recall
that in the immediate aftermath of the de Menezes shooting, the Guardian
wrote that the biggest mistake the police made was not the most
obvious one of shooting the wrong man.... The biggest mistake was not
to properly prepare the public for the sustained campaign of violence
facing the country.... More should have been done to prepare the public
for the forceful response needed to protect them.
This attempt to
stifle opposition to the criminal actions of the state beneath a blanket
of sanctimonious nonsense about allowing justice to take its course
continues to be the newspapers primary concern.
The Guardian is
the acknowledged mouthpiece of liberalism in Britain. For generations,
progressive-minded sections of the middle class have looked to its pages
for news and informed comment. To do so today is a hopeless quest.
The newspaper has
become little more than a mouthpiece of the Blair government. Its editorial
line has defended every political crime perpetrated by the governmentmost
notably in the war against Iraq. Now, even its expressed concern for
democratic rights has been thrown out the window.
How is such a dramatic
shift to be explained?
The Guardian does
not articulate the concerns of the majority of those who make up its
readership. It speaks for a narrow and privileged social stratumheavily
concentrated in the most prosperous areas of the capital.
This layer, while
it may on occasion call for a degree of moderation to be shown, is essentially
reconciled to the attacks on the social conditions of the working class
carried out by Blair since 1997 because it has benefited directly from
them. Its social situation has improved in direct proportion to the
impoverishment of millions of working people, including many long-time
readers of the newspaper in education and the caring professions.
In the past, the
Guardians professed concerns for democratic rights and progressive
social policies had a material base. It expressed an understanding that
continued social peace and political stability required that the worst
excesses of the profit system were ameliorated.
Today, such measures
are no longer possible. Every aspect of economic and social policy is
dictated by the interests of a financial oligarchy and its hangers-on
in the rarified environs of the upper middle class. They can only grow
rich by impoverishing those below them. And this is not possible without
abrogating essential democratic rights in order to prevent the development
of oppositional movements.
It is this social
order, rather than any abstract liberal principles, that the Guardian
defends and why it must justify repressionand not only when confronting
Islamic fundamentalists. It is an essential truth of contemporary political
life that the task of defending democratic rights is the responsibility
of the working class, which must organise itself independently of the
ruling elite and its pseudo-liberal apologists.