Socialist Equality Party : Manifesto of the Socialist Equality Party

Below we publish selected documents from "A State Murder Exposed: The truth about the killing of Joy Gardner". This book records the proceedings of a Workers Inquiry held November 4-5, 1995 to investigate the killing of Joy Gardner during a deportation raid on her home on July 28, 1993.

Notes:
The International Communist Party is the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party.
The International Worker is the socialist newspaper published by the British Trotskyists between 1986 and 1997.

From the Preface

Joy, a 40 year old Jamaican mother of two, came to Britain legally from Jamaica in 1987 to be reunited with her mother and family. She applied for leave to stay on compassionate grounds. Joy's appeal was rejected without her being informed, and deportation procedures instigated against her and her five year old son, Graeme. At 7.40 in the morning, five police officers and an immigration official forced their way into her home. Joy was thrown to the ground, bound with leather belts and gagged with 13 feet of surgical tape. She suffocated, suffering massive brain damage and never regained consciousness. On August 1, 1993 her life support was ended.

Initiated by the International Communist Party, the Workers Inquiry, held on November 4/5, 1995, found that:

1. Joy Gardner was the victim of a brutal police killing

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She died as a result of the restraint methods employed by three officers from the Alien Deportation Group -- PC Burrell, PC Whitby and Detective Sergeant Linda Evans. All those who participated in the deportation raid were accomplices in Joy's death.

2. The deportation raid was directed by the highest levels of the state

The ADG was a secretive police unit that specialised in forcible deportations. Its activities were controlled and authorised by the Home Office and the Home Secretary. They are thereby responsible for Joy's killing.

3. A concerted cover-up was organised from the moment Joy died

The purpose of the cover-up was both to exonerate the police officers involved and to cut the links between them and the Home Office. The media played an essential role in attempting to mould public opinion to accept Joy's death.

4. Responsibility for Joy's killing is shared by the Labour and trade union bureaucracy

Joy made impassioned pleas to Labour MP Bernie Grant and Transport and General Workers Union General Secretary Bill Morris, but neither of them attempted to mobilise their own organisations in her defence. This enabled the state to carry out its brutal attack.

The Workers Inquiry was a historic step forward for the working class. For the very first time the truth of how the state murdered an innocent working class woman has been exposed. This was only made possible because the ICP insisted that workers take matters into their own hands. From the start the Workers Inquiry opposed any reliance on the Labour Party and the unions and all attempts to divert anger over Joy's death into the bankrupt programme of black nationalism and pressurising the capitalist state for justice.

A state murder exposed is a comprehensive record of this historic event. It includes the major statements which formed the political axis of the campaign, such as "The killing of Joy Gardner: A Workers Inquiry is needed", 20,000 copies of which were distributed as a four page leaflet.

The 10 hours of submissions to the inquiry are published in full. This presents a detailed expose of the events leading to Joy's death and the cover-up which culminated in the acquittal of the officers involved. The testimony includes that of Joy's mother, Myrna Simpson, and other victims of state violence. It proves that Joy was killed as part of an offensive by the ruling class against the democratic rights of all workers. The final section of the book is made up of the commissioners' findings, which draw these central lessons from the evidence presented.

Anti-immigrant hysteria acts as a spearhead for the escalating assault on the entire working class. The profit system is unable to provide a future for millions of working people and youth. Today a third of Britain lives on or below the poverty line, millions are without work, while inequality is greater than at any time since 1880. The rich get richer at the direct expense of the broad mass of working people. The class polarisation which now exists demands a turn by the state to brutal repression in order to suppress a rising wave of protest against this social catastrophe.

Events in the immediate aftermath of the Workers Inquiry underscored its significance. Against a background of far reaching attacks on democratic rights such as the Criminal Justice Act, the Tory government have established a "white list" of countries where asylum applications will be assumed to be bogus, condemning thousands of refugees from brutal dictatorships and war, to death. Other measures strip thousands of immigrants of Social Security benefits, housing, NHS treatment and student grants. Millions of public sector workers are to become snoops for the Home Office, paving the way for a national system of spying and surveillance backed by the introduction of identity cards.

The brutal killing of workers by the police continues. Immediately prior to the Workers Inquiry being held, Dennis Stevens, a young black man, died in prison while strapped for 24 hours in a body-belt similar to that used against Joy Gardner. Just one month after the Inquiry police arrested Wayne Douglas, a 25 year old black man, for stealing a loaf of bread at knife point. An eyewitness reported that Douglas was beaten repeatedly with batons while unarmed. He died less than an hour later.

At a peaceful protest against this on December 13, 1995, demonstrators were attacked by mounted police in riot gear. Hundreds of police invaded Brixton in South London. Some were armed with guns, the first time ever in a civil disturbance in Britain. In a major attack on democratic rights, the police are seeking to prosecute speakers and organisations who distributed leaflets at the demonstration for "incitement to riot".

The Workers Inquiry established that the offensive of big business can be defeated only by uniting all workers -- black and white -- in a common struggle against the profit system. It has laid the basis for educating broad layers of workers and youth and mobilising them against the attacks of the Tory government, the Labour and trade union leaders and the state. We are confident that this book will make an important contribution to the development of this movement.

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