The Other Thin Blue Line - Policing Under Capitalism
13/04/2022
Joseph Tafra
A woman in her seventies confronts police officers and is violently slammed to the ground and pepper sprayed. Police charge an elderly man with ‘incitement’ after he calls for the arrest of a major politician. A man in Northcote Plaza is assaulted from behind by a police officer and slammed into the ground. Considering the widespread criticism of police during the peak of Black Lives Matter organising in 2020, we might expect all these incidents of police brutality and overreach to be condemned by people who consider themselves ‘on the left’ but that was not the case. Instead, online discourse in left-liberal spaces was rife with mockery of the victims and defence of the police.
Comments on a Reddit post in /r/CoronavirusDownunder about the woman assaulted by officers read:
“Protesters knew what to expect from the police. They were warned all week.”
“Why would you wanna go to a protest like this? Back to the nursing home”
“She fucked around and she found out. No sympathy.”
“You'd never see my Mum getting assaulted like this, because she doesn't go to antivaxx protests, cause she's not an idiot.”
Comments left on an anarchist Instagram post about the man arrested for speaking against a politician read:
“Best bit was what he said right at the end, as he was being arrested. "No! No! 😩” 😊”
“Ha ha. Mate. I love this shit. Sovereign citizens find out real quick that their bullshit legal word salad that they present doesn’t mean shit in reality … I love watching sov citizen make idiots out of themselves. And I enjoy watching cops do their jobs.”
“Hahahahaha watch him crying at the end”
The difference – as can be seen from some of the comments – is that instead of racialised minorities or left-wing protestors facing police repression, these were members of the anti-lockdown movement.
These commenters and many others in Australian society seem to view the police as a good or neutral force. Worthy of criticism when engaged in racist behaviour; worthy of praise when defending civilised people against the ‘barbarians’ of the day – most recently the anti-lockdown/anti-vaccine crowd. Some of the more radical people saying things like this might simply feel it's cathartic to see their political enemies or 'toxic white men' facing police repression instead of the usual targets. But they are still playing into a narrative that supports the mainstream view on police.
In this view, cops form a ‘thin blue line’ around our communities, facing outward in a protective stance against criminals and social chaos. Individual officers may cause problems but the institution itself is important and only needs proper management and occasional reforms.
For this to be true, society itself would need to be neutral – that is, all people in society would have to share the same overall interests with no big class divisions that could lead to struggle. This is not the case in Australia or anywhere else in the capitalist world. A small minority hoards land, factories, resources, intellectual property, and money and the rest of us must work for these capitalists in exchange for a wage. As individuals, we have little power against this minority. But, over the centuries, workers have formed trade unions and revolutionary organisations to shift the balance of power through united action. This ongoing struggle between workers and capitalists continues to shape our world.
In such a divided society, the capitalists face a constant danger – that the majority will unite to overthrow them. Friedrich Engels argued that the capitalist state exists to keep class struggle within acceptable bounds so that the ruling class can continue to exploit workers. This is done partly by granting concessions to workers, such as reductions in work hours or improvements in conditions and wages, and partly through surveillance and violence by “special bodies of armed men” such as the police. The thin blue line, according to Engels, does not circle communities protectively but runs straight through them – the workers and unemployed below the line taste the boot of policing while the capitalists and politicians above receive protection.
Three areas of policing clearly demonstrate their allegiance to the state and the capitalists it serves:
The different treatment of interpersonal crimes and the crimes of big business
The cops’ role in union-busting
Violence and discrimination against Indigenous peoples
Police tend to concern themselves with crimes that occur from person to person, on the streets or in private homes: robbery, muggings, street violence, sexual assault, domestic violence, and murder. Putting aside the fact that police officers are more likely than the general population to be domestic abusers, and usually go unpunished, these are all still serious problems that need to be dealt with. Cops aren’t too effective at doing this, often escalating situations unnecessarily and targeting poor and Indigenous people far too often, but some would still argue they’re the best solution in an imperfect world.
However, police barely touch the biggest crimes in society, and those who commit them usually go unpunished, face insignificant fines, or at worst receive lenient ‘white collar’ sentences. Wage theft outstrips other types of theft but police treat it very differently. For example, in 2014 it was discovered that 7/11 was systematically underpaying workers. Once caught, correct wages were paid but workers were made to pay back a percentage in cash to keep the theft going – many were on working Visas and feared disobeying would get them fired. After public pressure, the company was made to pay back $173 million to 4,043 current and former employees. Imagine if an ordinary worker managed to rob so many people for almost $22,000 each -- they’d be locked up and treated as a pariah. 7/11 simply paid back the money and promised not to do it again. In the construction industry, workers die regularly due to unsafe conditions, but their employers are not imprisoned for manslaughter. Usually, the deaths are deemed ‘tragic accidents’ and business goes on. Unauthorised strikes, on the other hand, lead to millions of dollars in fines – according to capitalist law, work stoppages are worse than dead workers.
Companies that pollute the environment or contribute to catastrophic climate change simply pay fines or additional taxes – which they’ve budgeted for anyway – while the damage they cause threatens ecosystems, entire species, and human communities. Illegal wars kill millions and destroy entire nations’ infrastructures but those responsible never see jail time so long as they lead capitalist countries allied with American imperialism – John Howard has the blood of many Iraqis on his hands but the idea of the police dragging him away in cuffs is laughable. More recently, Bill Gates and others campaigned to privatise publicly-funded COVID vaccines, preventing intellectual property waivers that would hurt corporate profits. As a result, millions have died needlessly in the global south and COVID has been able to mutate and partially outsmart vaccines. This isn’t even treated as a crime; it’s simply a profitable business decision.
As well as going easy on capitalist companies and elites, the police also play an active role in crushing worker power. When capitalists cannot or will not appease organised workers with concessions, the police have consistently come to their aid as strike breakers, infiltrators, scab labour, and even executioners.
A vivid example of how early police forces in the US emerged as a buffer between workers and capitalists comes from Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1877. During the Scranton General Strike, local businessmen led by industrialist William Scranton armed themselves and confronted striking workers in the street. They shot and killed four workers and several employers were injured by workers with clubs. Unsurprisingly, events like this accelerated the creation of city police forces – class warfare is less dangerous for the capitalists if they can hide away while armed cops face down workers instead.
Police repression of strikers is prominent in Australian labour history. In the QLD railway strike of 1948, as 20,000 workers shut down rail transport in QLD to fight the state’s low-wage policy, Labor premier Ned Hanlon proclaimed a state of emergency and gave police wide powers to attack the striking workers’ picket lines, hoping to undermine their morale. Along with police repression, Hanlon’s government and Federal Labor took other measures – withdrawing social service payments from striking workers, purposely holding up food distribution and blaming it on the strikes, and threatening mass firings if strikers didn’t return to work. The strike leaders responded: “Our cause is just, our unity unshaken. Victory will be ours.”
The strike spread to include waterside workers, the Seaman’s Union, railway workers in NSW, Victoria, and South Australia, and many miners. This was followed by a mass demonstration outside the QLD parliament. In response, Hanlon introduced the Industrial Law Amendments Act, which allowed any ranking police officer to enter meetings of workers and private homes, by force if necessary, and arrest anyone they believed was encouraging strike actions. No warrant was required for arrest.
Police used these new powers liberally. When workers marched on St Patrick’s Day with placards protesting this repressive law, they were met by a force of 300 police who attacked them with batons, fists, and boots, leading to hospitalisations. Fred Paterson, the only communist member of state parliament, was bashed over the head from behind in a targeted attack resulting in a near-fatal skull fracture.
Despite this state-backed police violence, followed by threats of worse and attempted arrests of trade union leaders, the strikers continued and were victorious in early April, winning significant pay increases for railway workers, as well as teachers, meatworkers, building trade workers, clerks, waterside workers, and others – including the police.
50 years later, in 1998, the Liberal government under John Howard attempted to destroy the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). Howard wanted to bring wages down on the docks to win higher profit margins for owners. He also wanted a weaker union to ensure minimal opposition to the privatisation of government shipping company ANL.
After passing his now infamous Workplace Relations Act, which limited the right to strike, Howard took aim at the docks. With the support of his government and employer groups, Patrick Stevedores – one of Australia’s biggest stevedoring companies – sacked 1,400 full-time and 600 part-time unionised workers, locked them out of their workplaces, and announced it would outsource employment to labour-hire companies. Balaclava-wearing security guards with dogs swarmed the docks to drive workers out, and scab labour took over.
These aggressive moves led to industrial actions and protests across the country, and the police were ready to fight alongside Patrick Stevedores and the Howard government. In Fremantle, 140 police descended on a picket blocking trucks from accessing the dock. They dragged away and brutalised picketers, smashing the camp. But within hours, 2,000 supporters arrived to reinforce the line. Across the country, police engaged in similar actions – in Sydney, news crews captured two young children screaming as their father was dragged away from the picket line by cops. Police also cut union locks to allow access to worksites, arrested protesters, and used other tactics to intimidate and demoralise strikers. At a picket on the East Swanson Dock in Melbourne, police were sent to break the line but found themselves surrounded by 2,000 construction workers and chose an awkward retreat over further escalation.
Eventually Patrick Stevedores backed down and allowed a union workforce on the docks – a big victory in one way. But the deal allowing workers back was harsh – 629 redundancies, an increased work week, pay cuts up to 30%, and a massive increase in casual jobs.
Police are always on the side of capitalists and the state in labour disputes. They aren’t always violent – even in ‘98, the cops were often passive and accommodating – but their job is always to police workers’ actions against employers, not the other way around. The police are there to maintain ‘law and order’ as defined by the capitalist state, so even if they perform this role without violence or overt partisanship, they still serve the ruling class against the workers. Part of the reason we see less police violence against striking workers now is that, since Howard, the right to strike is so limited. In 2021, I sat on a picket as striking workers drank tea and passively watched scabs arrive to maintain company profits – a strike without the withdrawal of labour power! They feared the repercussions if they dared do anything more militant.
The role of police in maintaining de facto racial segregation in Australia is stark and has its roots in the violent settler-colonial origins of Australia. Zachary Rolfe was recently cleared on all charges after putting three bullets in Indigenous teenager Kumanjayi Walker, firing twice after Walker was already incapacitated. There have been almost 500 Aboriginal deaths in custody since the Royal Commission in 1987 – no police officer has been convicted for any of these deaths, despite ongoing evidence of violence and neglect. If non-Indigenous people were killed at the same rate, the number would be around 15,000 dead.
Cops violently broke up the Djab Wurrung embassy on behalf of Dan Andrews’ state Labor government in 2020 just as they did the Tent Embassy in the 1970s. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders make up 30% of the Australian prison population, despite being only 3% of the population, with a 60% increase in Aboriginal women being locked up between 2000 and 2010. The police also played a key role in dispossessing and oppressing Aboriginal people historically – for example, on West Australian cattle stations, Aboriginals were kept in slavery and returned in chains by state police if they escaped, a practice that continued until 1960.
There is also the complex web of restrictions placed on Aboriginal life as part of the Northern Territory Intervention, which violates multiple Australian and international laws and is enforced largely through policing. As one example, Indigenous people buying beer in the NT are quizzed by police stationed at the bottle shop about where they will drink the alcohol before they are allowed to purchase. White Territorians don’t face the same treatment.
This discriminatory treatment of Indigenous peoples might be seen as a mere hangover from the early days of settlement, but it serves an important purpose today. If Indigenous nations were allowed to recover from the trauma of invasion and genocide, they could be an even more powerful force of resistance to the capitalist state. So, the trauma, violence, impoverishment, and discrimination are kept alive.
Considering all this, it is clear the police are enemies of working and unemployed people everywhere. Despite your friendly neighbourhood cop or extreme situations in which we are grateful for police intervention, the institution itself must be treated as an organised enemy force. We can’t decide the police are good one day and bad the next based on individual actions. An analysis of their overall social purpose is needed, and such an analysis shows they are foot-soldiers protecting the capitalist class. As we see the increasing militarisation of Australian police forces and the massive growth of police spending and police powers, all working people need to realise the cops can never be our allies in struggle.