Police Federation Break With Patel: an opportunity to Kill The Bill?

On July 22, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) passed a vote of no confidence in home secretary, Priti Patel.

The result, the first of its kind in a decade, follows a pay dispute between the PFEW, and the home secretary and the Police Remuneration Review Body, which determines police pay.

Could this offer an opportunity to the Kill The Bill campaign to prevent the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill?

Throughout the Kill The Bill protests, the police have often been taken as the enemy.

The idea that the police en masse are responsible for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill is easy to understand. It has the word ‘Police’ at the beginning, for one thing, and senior police figures like Cressida Dick have actively lobbied for it.

Yet, the decision to pursue the Bill and to pass it through Parliament ultimately comes from politicians, mainly Priti Patel, for whom the PCSC Bill beckons in a world of matronly sadism that would make Miss Truncheon green with envy.

How accurate, then, is the Patel-Police equivalence? Are their interests really so in sync? This is more than an analytic question: our strategy for resisting the PCSC Bill depends on our ability to locate key decision-makers and to target them with protest.

The PFEW vote certainly casts doubt on the assumed unity of Patel and the Police. Whilst some have dismissed this move as simply a cynical attempt by the police to leverage higher pay, the comments of the PFEW suggest deeper motives are in play.

A statement published on the PFEW website revealed that “There is enormous anger within policing, with officers across England and Wales saying the Government takes them for granted and treats them with contempt.”

Police forces across the UK have been under incredible strain throughout the pandemic, working on the front line against not only Kill The Bill protests but often violent anti-lockdown protests, often without PPE and without being fast tracked for vaccines.

In short, Patel wants the police to enforce her vision of a dissent-free society, but is not willing to provide them with the means they need to do so.

This, in fact, is nothing new.

Passing relatively unnoticed at the time, in March Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published a report commenting on the protest-related aspects of the PCSC Bill, which was being drafted at the time.

The report itself, unsurprisingly, supported the new provisions, but buried within it were the responses of individual officers who had been interviewed for the report, officers from across the UK and across all ranks of the police.

Most notably, many interviewees commented on how the provisions of the PCSC Bill are not needed, that protest law is sufficiently robust as it stands, and that what officers need instead are the resources to simply enforce those laws, resources like decent pay, recruitment standards, and support from the Crown Prosecution Service.

To be clear, I am not a fan of the police and I do not wish to see them granted any extra powers to crackdown on protests.

However, killing the Bill means thinking strategically, and any gap between Patel and the police can be leveraged to our advantage. For instance, other public sector workers, notably in the NHS, are engaged in similar struggles for fair pay. Protests have been held to support the #NHSPay15 campaign; would it be inconceivable to hold protests for fair public sector pay generally i.e. including the police?

Many Kill The Bill protesters would baulk at the idea of solidarity with the police, and, as noted I am no fan. But surely, when presented with an opportunity to shake the pillar on which Patel’s legitimacy stands, it would be folly to let it pass with a cynical cry of “ACAB”?

The police may remain the enemy, but Patel is the real villain. It is Patel who holds the vision for a sterile society, purged, of dissent, and it is Patel who holds the reins of power to effect such a nightmare. Taking down Patel should be our first priority, and if the PFEW are prepared to do that, we should be glad to support them.