Police Road Blocks Around Christchurch

Last month I blogged what I felt was the likely timescale for the construction of a police state in the UK something the Blair government and now the Brown government seemed set on doing, for example through extending the period of detention without charge to 42 days. Maybe I was optimistic in how long all of this would take as today I encountered the first police checkpoint in the UK that I have been aware of since the Miners' Strike of 1984-5 when police had the right to stop anyone anywhere (including infamously in the Blackwall Tunnel in London, scores of miles from any coal mine) if they suspected them of going to a picket around a coal mine. What I encountered this evening trying to drive through Christchurch which I thought was in Hampshire, but it turns out is in Dorset, reminded me of the one-off TV drama 'Party Time' (1992) written by Harold Pinter and starring Barry Foster. It was set in the near future in which the UK is a police state and many of the guests coming to the party are delayed by police checkpoints. Time passes so quickly that it is odd to think that here in 2008 we are in fact in the 'near future' of people living in 1992, so I guess it should not be too surprising that some elements of that play have already come true. Pinter is an astute playwright.


Anyway, if you have to drive anywhere near Christchurch (and I only had to because an accident had blocked the main road I was taking West), my advice is do not. It may only be temporary but these evening there are police roadblocks on all of the main roads into the town and they seem to be stopping everyone. They are heavily staffed with ten officers at each checkpoint. I saw them with car boots open, they were clearly searching cars. When I questioned the officer he denied there was any terrorist activity in the area. That may be what they always say but more alarmingly, it may suggest that this is now 'normal' police behaviour around the town. I think I was particularly pulled over because people often mistake me for a Pole. Around 1 million Poles moved to the UK in 2006 and the number for 2007 was probably not much less. In the city of Southampton around 20 miles to the East of Christchurch with a population over 220,000, 10% of the people are now from Poland. There has not been any real racial tension, though I see a BNP (British National Party, a fascist party) candidates is standing in Bournemouth next door to Christchurch. This is outside the BNP's normal area of operations in East London and Lancashire, but may represent that they feel a way in there if there is racist behaviour going on.

Anyway, when the policeman spoke to me and heard my middle class English accent he let me go. This suggests that not only do we have roadblocks as normal behaviour in the UK now but that the actions taken at them (for example whether to search the car or not) depends on the nationality or ethnicity of the driver. So, I advise all drivers to stay clear of what seems to have become a mini-authoritarian state of Christchurch in Dorset and especially if you happen to be of East European origins (or, presumably, Middle Eastern extraction too given how obsessed the UK remains with al-Qaeda).


I always hope that when I see signs of the growing police state in Britain that they are an error, that Christchurch police had a slow day and decided to exercise their powers. Who can blame then when you find Poole Council (hang on, that is next to Bournemouth, is there some kind of testing ground for an authoritarian regime going on in South-West England) was using anti-terrorism powers to put surveillance on three families trying to get their children into a particular state school. Anyway, I hope these things are an error, but how many errors can you accept before you have to recognise that the police state is already here?


P.P. I did wonder why Christchurch should be the focus of such police activity and then I looked on the map and realised that it lies very close to Bournemouth Airport and in fact the road I had been diverted on to runs right to the airport. Furthermore, Bournemouth Airport (along with Prestwick Airport) has been one of the airports at which CIA rendition flights on their way to Guantanamo Bay have been stopping. So, though I still believe that the police state is creeping up on us quickly, in this case it looks like the British police were actually acting on behalf of the Americans. Presumably they suspected protests or something at the airport and were keen to keep people, that in their eyes looked suspicious, away from the location so as not to embarrass the Americans.

P.P. 16/08/2010: I have now found out that these road blocks are an annual event, we are told, simply connected with monitoring traffic flow.  Apparently, they are not mentioned on local radio or television traffic reports so that people do not alter their route to avoid them.  I also, found that I was in my rights to refuse to speak to them. Despite the presence of the police and their assistants wearing a kind of uniform and official badge, you are not at all obliged to talk to them, the best thing is simply to sit in your car with your window closed and simply look ahead.  Wait until they have finished with everyone else and then simply drive on when the car in front of you does.  In spite of these road blocks (and I will call them nothing else as they do block the road and prevent you driving on) being given an innocuous spin, I would ask why is one stretch of road, close to an airport used by the CIA checked year in/year out.  What is so significant about Christchurch, Bournemouth even, that needs such attention?  I could understand it better around Southampton, Portsmouth or Bristol, but two holiday resorts?  Maybe I have been lucky and have missed out on such other road blocks around actually important urban centres.  If you have encountered some let me know and we can start a list of the black spots and the time of year they are likely to have road blocks, for whatever reason we are told we need them.

It's Not Us, It's You Who's To Blame: Upside-Down Values in British Society

Two news items struck me today and thoroughly irritated me. They always say that the high-tech that you see in a spy movie or a heist movie has generally been in use by intelligence agencies or criminals five years before you see it in a movie and think it is so advanced. This is how I am now viewing British society. Recently I wrote about what I anticipated the next steps to be in the creation of the British police state over the next 5-10 years and then today I look around and find that some of them are already in place. It was claimed Poole Council (Poole is a medium-sized coastal town in South-West England) had put a family under surveillance for two weeks because they believed the parents were trying to cheat the system for the allocation of school places for their 3-year old child. Rather than be embarrassed when this came to light, the council (this is a local authority not some national intelligence or police body) said that it was quite within the law to put the family under surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which was introduced to help track terrorists and serious criminals, not ordinary families commiting no crime. The surveillance actually exonerated the family from doing anything wrong. As I have said before such 'anti-terrorist' powers always quickly become abused by authorities, pretty often 'little Hitlers' like local council officers as much as by state bodies. Poole Council seemed quite pleased with itself and proudly said it had had five other families under surveillance to try to combat false applications for school places. These people should be paying compensation not crowing about how quickly they are eroding our civil liberties.

The other thing, is why is there such an issue over which school children should go to and that families will do anything such as move house, change religion or lie about where they live to get into them? Well, it is because we have moved to such a divisive schooling system. Ever since Tony Blair's script-writer called comprehensive schools 'bog standard' in 2002 there has been a green light to move to an education system which increasingly divides UK society. More and more schools are allowed to select which pupils come to them on really any grounds they choose. Last week the BBC revealed that in a random selection of areas government officials found many schools were imposing illegal selection criteria to bar certain types of children for example through asking about family income or marital status or in some cases actually charging fees of up to £945 (€1190: US$1880) per term for what is supposed to be a free schooling system. Of course such schools cream off not only strong pupils but resources too so you do not have a very good school and then a reasonable school down the road you have an excellent schools and a very poor quality school as second choice. When a third of parents do not get their children into their first choice of secondary school you can see the reason why they are driven to extreme methods. In the UK going to a poor school can damn you for life barring you from getting good exam results, getting to university, getting work. Children are locked into certain paths from the moment they start school and despite Britain's supposed classless society it is nearly impossible to get off the path you get put upon. Success in the UK for young people has nothing to do with ability it is about winning an educational lottery. So, if Poole Council was not full up of arrogant idiots who somehow think their petty concerns are more important than real life and think they should use police state tactics to enforce their personal views, they might save the council taxpayers money from surveillance and put it in to ensuring all schools in their borough are of a good standard.

The other news story was about the High Court ruling that to send British troops ill-equipped into battle was to violate their human rights. An Army spokesman has said British troops are always properly equipped and yet at inquest after inquest we hear how a soldier died because they had a defective parachute or lacked night vision goggles or lack body armour or their armoured vehicle had no armour underneath it and so on and so on. If the government wants to involve the British Armed Forces in so many conflicts it should stop doing it on the cheap. So quickly they seem somehow, probably influenced by President Bush's thinking, returned to the attitude of the First World War (excellent on this is 'British Bunglers and Butchers of World War I' by John Laffin (reissued 2003)), that victory can be achieved by an almost ritualistic sacrifice of young people in large numbers. When guerilla forces who have been hiding in the mountains for years can pull out anti-aircraft rockets, you cannot go up against them less than totally prepared and fully equipped. Yet again, however, we are told we are wrong to raise such complaints and should ignore what is being done to fellow British citizens (and in fact increasingly from other countries as the British Army seeks again to fill up its thinning ranks with soldiers from the Commonwealth, despite the fact that the Gurkhas from Nepal were revealed last week to only get 10% of the pension a British soldier they may have served alongside would get). No, these are important issues and 'you': you in local authorities, you in the military, you in government, are wrong. Listen to the people who are suffering because of you narrow minded, arrogant policies and do the right thing for a change rather than whining when we draw your attention to your terrible blunders.