THE recent arrest of anti-war, pro-Palestinian activists alongside a steady attempt to delegitimise protest should be a cause for concern for everyone on the left – and will be a key part of the discussion at Arise Festival’s forthcoming Socialism or Barbarism day school.    
 
While the democratic rights we enjoy have been hard won, they have always come with limitations — we are, after all, still “subjects,” even today. As in the attack on, and subsequent arrest of, the Stop the War organiser Chris Nineham, these limitations are often imposed violently by police and security forces.
 
Engels explained how the state comes to be a force used by the capitalist class to put down resistance. In his important work The Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State, he wrote that in the development of human history “it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate class conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”
 
A survey of recent British history shows how this “power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it” has been deployed by the capitalist class against workers.
 
The roots of many of the restrictions we face today can be traced back to Thatcherism’s drive to reverse the limited but tangible gains made by the working class following WWII. The case of the Miners’ Strike offers a particularly stark illustration.
 
The offensive against the NUM utilised multiple tools of the state – not only physical force by the police, but a relentless targeting of the unions by intelligence services designed to leave it divided, demoralised and defeated — as documented in Seamus Milne’s The Enemy Within.
 
Thatcher’s war on resistance not only involved taking on workers industrially, but politically, too. 

This period also saw the shutting down of the Greater London Council, which had not only implemented a bold policy agenda but given support to a variety of important causes for the left – including in relation to Ireland, where the clampdown on free speech extended to forcing broadcasters to engage in a form of reverse lip-syncing on footage of Gerry Adams speaking.
 
Like with many other Thatcher-era changes – while New Labour did make some improvements – it broadly accepted the direction of travel, with Tony Blair famously boasting of maintaining some of the strictest anti-union laws in Europe. 

Blair’s tenure also saw the breaking of the FBU strike in 2003 and the introduction of the Prevent programme four years later.
 
A programme which ran across both these premierships used spies to infiltrate a range of organisations — not only left groups but campaigns on issues like anti-racism, the environment, peace (and even the Young Liberals). 

As the Spycops scandal showed, in the most extreme cases undercover agents not only manipulated activists into relationships but had children with them. There is still a battle today to uncover the full extent of what took place.
 
In 2010, demonstrations against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s trebling of tuition fees were met with kettling tactics against protesters as a result of which one protester, Aflie Meadows, won recently a compensation from the Metropolitan Police over being hit by a baton – an injury that required over 100 staples in his head.
 
The aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has seen a particularly vicious political offensive against the left. 

For those in power, it wasn’t enough for him to be defeated – he and his supporters had to be made an example of and never allowed to be a significant force in mass politics again.
 
As well as the McCarthyism inside the Labour Party, the last parliament saw various measures designed to clamp down further on popular mobilisation and organisation. 

Yet more anti-union legislation, the attempt at a boycott Bill, and the Public Order Act – which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described as “deeply troubling legislation that is incompatible with the UK’s international human rights obligations.”
 
The Metropolitan Police’s aggressive response to the vigil held for Sarah Everard [murdered by serving police officer Wayne Cozens] was an example of both the viciousness of this clampdown and the process that Engels describes, whereby the state “alienates itself more and more from society.”
 
At this moment in time the Palestine solidarity movement is the chief target, not only in terms of inflammatory rhetoric from ministers, but increasingly draconian policing methods with leading figures being singled out and a more and more obstructionist approach in relation to demonstrations.
 
The response to the various election results last year indicated an increasing tendency to portray the democratic voice of both Muslim communities and anyone unwilling to toe the line on foreign policy as illegitimate, whatever your own assessment of any particular candidate elected.
 
This trend is likely to continue as the ruling class and its government in Britain find themselves in more and more of a mess both at home and abroad.
 
In terms of how socialists respond to this, there is a need for a decisive break from a recent tendency of joining in with campaigns aimed at delegitimising and shutting down others on the left because of grudges held against them or ongoing disagreements. 

We should encourage a culture where differences – even those that are strongly felt – are resolved through discussion and debate rather than bureaucratic punishments which only weaken us collectively.
 
Organisations which already work on these issues – such as the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, Orgreave Truth and Justice, the Spycops campaign and the coalitions currently coming together to defend the right to protest obviously have an important role to play. 

A key task is to strengthen the links across trade unionists, social movements and those in elected office wherever we can to build alliances in defence of our rights to counter fragmentation and demoralisation.
 
We’ll be discussing how we do this and more at the Arise Festival Socialism or Barbarism day school on Saturday March 29 – so make sure to book your place now!
 
• Ben Hayes is a volunteer with Arise – a  Festival of Left Ideas. He will be speaking at the Socialism or Barbarism in-person day-school in London on Saturday March 29, alongside MPs including Richard Burgon and Ian Byrne, campaigner Jess Barnard, Calvin Tucker of the Morning Star, Sinn Fein’s Pat Cullen, socialist economist Michael Roberts and campaigns such as PSC, CND, War On Want, We Own It, the Mexico Solidarity Forum, and Stand up to Racism. The day features 15+ sessions of socialist political education. Register and info at bit.ly/socialismorbarbarism