Andrew Mitchell - Plebgate Controversy
Forget The Mayan 21/12:2012 apocalypse thingymejig, the big news is that we have a potential big scale police corruption case in which members of the police service conspired to ‘fit up’ a serving minister of the crown. Being ‘fitted up’ by the police is a common British phrase which mean that the police are using corrupt practices to secure a conviction against a person who the police want to get rid off. They tend to use this method when they want to get rid of a case or for political reason they want to denigrate someone.
This is a practice that is used by security services all around the World and even during the Roman times they had a phrase ”Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” which meant “Who will guard the guards themselves?” It is and will always be a problem for any democratic government because on one hand you need a independent judiciary so the law of the land cannot be manipulated and on the other hand you need to make sure that the law is seen to be equal when used against any individual. But as we know from history, theory and practice are two different things. Just as in poker knowing what should happen and what happens in reality are never exactly the same.
Andrew Mitchell is from a background which gives the impression that he is a rich boy in position of power due to his family connection and not through work of his own making. So when he was accused by some officers of being extremely rude because the police would not let him ride his bicycle out of the gates of Downing St but made to ride it through the side entrance immediately you have a clash of old fashioned class warfare between toffs and the lumpen masses.
Technically the police were right if they wanted to restrict Andrew Mitchell (who at the time was Chief Whip – a person to make sure that MP’s vote the way the political parties of the day want their MP’s to vote in parliament) from using the main gates as the opening of the gates is for official usage. However it seems that there has never been a problem before – according to Mr Mitchell. This time there was a problem and words were exchanged. Primarily from Andrew Mitchell who admits that he swore at the officers for being overly official. However, what made the story worst was that the officers claimed he used snob language such as ‘plebs’ (short for plebeian, another Roman word meaning common folk and people not born into high society) to emphasize the class difference which still riddles the country from the road sweeper right down to the Royal family.
Andrew Mitchell rejected the claim but was sacked because whatever the coalition government want, they do not want any light shone on the clear evidence that the top jobs have gone to a very small band of friends who all went to the same school and grew up in the same environment. The reason why they do not want to be accused of using snobbish language is that the government want to cut the money given to poor people, sell off public assets to their friends and supporters which include the selling off some of the police and security services.
It now seem that there was a conspiracy to include words such a pleb in evidence of bad manners to make sure that Mr Mitchell and the government would be in trouble. As we witness the student riots of 2010 and the youth riots of 2011 this coalition government is not popular at all because of their class conscious approach to ruling the people of the UK.
When the story broke it led to the police (who are not happy with the government because the government are cutting police jobs) protesting that the government was ‘out of touch’ and wanted bad things for the country. This maybe true but there was evidence that the police made up the story of the use of the word pleb and this has given David Cameron the excuse to attack the police in parliament of making the accusation up.
The funny thing about all of this is that the police and the Tories have always been close friends, that’s why the police got away with fitting up The Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, The PC Blakelock Incidence, The Hillsborough Disaster, The Miners Strike etc. In fact one of the first acts of Margaret Thatcher was to give the police a huge pay rise when she came into office because she wanted the police on board when she decided to take on the poor and working class via her ‘trade union’ reform which she knew would not be popular.
It has also been suggested that the riots of 2010 and 2011 were in some part orchestrated by the police because they were very upset about the cut in numbers and pay. The fact that police cars/vans always seem to left unattended right next to a protest march and everyone is surprised when they get trashed, is now becoming a part of folk lore.
So what happens now is that the police are investigating themselves to see if an act of collusion, falsifying of evidence and other criminal acts have taken place. This begs the question is it right for the police to police the police? Well, shall we say that the jury is out on that question and based on anecdotal and official record this will not end nicely.
We need a police service which is fair and just. Privatising the police service is wrong as it will lead to unequal security. Those with resources will get the best practices and those without will get the worst, that is what market forces will do. It is so obvious that this government is completely at fault when the evidence backs up this argument, by which time it is too late. History tells us that corporate government leads to fascism and evil outcome. That is why the Liberal Democrats will be destroyed in the next election for complicity in this act of illogical nonsense.
Andrew Mitchell and plebgate: Channel 4 News exclusive investigation.
