Workers Solidarity Movement

What better to bring us together in these uncertain times than our shared realisation that cops across the globe are the barking lapdog bastards of the elite, whose purpose it is to force society into staying in a miserable and unfair condition. How wonderful to have something in common.

Anyone following or involved with the struggle against the water charges, or for decent housing, or anything which challenges the status quo really, will know that the cops aren't on our side - not by a long shot.

Some people make the understandable mistake of thinking that it's only the cops in their town, city, or country which are corrupt, boneheaded, vindictive, thunderous bastards. Alas! The same is true everywhere.

That's because they are all fundamentally the same. Whether it's Glowsticks in the south of Ireland dragging peaceful water charges protester across the road, or a pack of French gendarme jackals beating a Nuit Debout protestor on their knees, the police worldwide are organised in the same sort of way, at the beckon call of the same sort of elite, to achieve the same sort of purpose.

It's no accident. Think the police was invented by co-operating groups of smiling neighbours to make the world a lovely place? Oops. They were invented to be bastards in the first place, to catch escaping slaves and to make sure the working class were well-behaved little cash-cows. Not off to a good start so.

Need to kick a family out of their home because they can't afford rent? Who you gunna call? Cop bastards!

People getting angry that you're forcing them to pay twice for water? Who you gunna call? Cop bastards!

In France hundreds of thousands of people have risen up against neoliberalism, the state, capitalism, sexism, racism, since the Spring. People are having giant direct democratic assemblies with thousands of people, shutting down airports, trains, petrol stations, oil refineries, bridges, universities, and more, with rolling strikes and blockades. Militant demonstrators are claiming the streets, smashing ATMs and shopfronts. The general order - that is the order which allows institutionalised penury, boredom, ripping-off, dehumanisation - is in peril.

And that's where the police enter the fray. The thin blue line between the barbarity and ignorance of the present and the liberty and prosperity of the future we could have.

So, come on now, as they chant in France 'everybody hates cops!'