BY PETER BOYLE
If anything captured the desperation of the ruling class during the S11 blockade, it was the screaming headlines about "violent protests" accompanied by graphic photographs and TV images of police, with name tags removed, beating up and running over peaceful protesters during the three-day blockade of the World Economic Forum's summit.
It's impossible to calculate the exact numbers of protesters injured or hospitalised, but the figure is in the hundreds. But their injuries didn't prevent Labor premier Steve Bracks from claiming the S11 blockaders had "deserved everything they got" or his NSW counterpart Bob Carr slanderously labelling them "un-Australian, fascist bullies".
While Liberal PM John Howard and his treasurer Peter Costello chimed in, it was the two Labor premiers who did most to applaud and egg on the police violence. To rub salt into the wounds of the protesters, Bracks announced he would host a congratulatory barbecue for the police performance at S11. The barbecue has been continually postponed (possibly indefinitely) and S11 activists have threatened a demonstration at such a "celebration".
Bracks and Carr seemed determined to prove their loyalty to the corporate chieftains of the WEF. Labor has traditionally been used by the ruling class as the party best suited to control popular mass movements, because of its domination of the trade unions and strong influence in community organisations. Bracks tried to use those traditional Labor links to get the blockade called off but he failed, which may partly account for his unleashing of the police bullies at S11.
The worst police violence took place on the second day of the blockade, after WEF organisers reportedly bailed up Bracks and threatened to cancel the remaining conference sessions.
For his special efforts in urging the more than 2500 police (a third of Victoria's police force) guarding the Crown Casino conference venue to crackdown on the blockaders, Steve Bracks has earned condemnation from trade unionists, church leaders, lawyers and even in his own party branch, several resignations for the ALP and a pie in the face.
The Labor member for Franklin, Harry Quick, told federal parliament he had "lost faith" in the Victorian Premier, whose behaviour had been "a disgrace". Quick's daughter was one of hundreds of peaceful protesters who were attacked by baton-wielding police at S11.
Bracks is now so unpopular he even faced sustained booing when he opened the motorcycle Grand Prix at Phillip Island.
Bracks has tried to undo some of the damage. According to a report in the October 20 Australian, Bracks invited comedian Rod Quantock, himself a victim of the baton assaults, for a chat. Quantock has become a prominent campaigner against the police violence at S11.
Federal Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley has remained largely silent on the issue of police violence. Interviewed at the October 22 Victorian ALP state conference, however, he justified the police violence, claiming protesters came armed with "marbles, bags of urine, the works" and were ready for confrontation. This slander was based on a claim by Police Deputy Commissioner Neil O'Loughlin that the police confiscated a bag of marbles from one protester on September 13, the last day of the blockade and after the worst of the police violence.
The police violence at S11 is now subject to an inquiry by the Victorian ombudsman and some 50 civil suits are soon to be filed by injured protesters. Given that police have agreed to pay $300,000 in out-of-court settlements on civil suits for their 1993 baton charge on those occupying the Richmond Secondary College, the S11 civil suits may extract payments of more than $1 million.
According to Marcus Clayton, who acted for some of the Richmond protesters and is handling many cases against the police from S11, the police used unreasonable, unprovoked and excessive violence at S11. He told the Age that although police have the power to use force to prevent a breach of the peace and allow people to go about their lawful business, the power only applies to making an arrest. None of the S11 protesters who were injured were arrested.
Dr Jude McCulloch, a lecturer in police studies at Deakin University, says that civil litigation is an effective way of making the police more accountable. She told ABC Radio's Law Report program on October 27 that the Victorian police have paid out about $8 million in settlement of civil suits over the last six years. Most of these were for the use of excessive violence.
Recent changes to Victoria's Police Regulation Act have provided individual police officers with a state indemnity for civil actions arising out the performance of their duties. McCulloch says that this may be one reason for the increasing use of "paramilitary policing" in the state.
While the civil suits could apply some pressure on the police by exacting a financial cost for their actions at S11, it will be the movement's ability to exact a weightier political cost on the government and ruling class that will have the greater impact.
Indeed one of the greatest political victories at S11 was that the united and disciplined peaceful blockade showed that it was the police, and the forces they serve, who are the violent bullies acting against the interest of the majority. Bracks, Carr, Howard, Costello were seen by the public to have used the state's professional thugs to defend the biggest global exploiters.
The right to demonstrate was won in Australia during the movement against the Vietnam War. It wasn't won in the courts but in the streets. Eventually federal and state governments realised that it was just too politically costly to suppress demonstrations.
S11 will force them to learn this lesson all over again.