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Hypocrisy over use of violence

Police commanders are collaborating with the university authorities to crush dissent through violence

All trade unionists should emulate the firm stance taken by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey in solidarity with student protests against repression.

Police commanders are collaborating with the university authorities to crush dissent through violence, victimisation and financial penalties.

Politicised policing is no stranger to the trade union movement, which has suffered surveillance, heavy-handedness and legal fit-ups to prevent workers having the confidence to voice their demands and to fight for them.

Students are in a similar position today, squeezed financially and seeing privateers lining up to milk an education system once provided free but now regarded as simply another commodity to be exploited by the capitalist class.

Morale is rock bottom among both students and their lecturers, because of the impact of low salaries, the sale of student loans to private debt-recovery firms and the looming threat of annual tuition fees rising to £16,000.

The condemnation by Unite of the heavy-handed tactics deployed by university vice-chancellors and police against recent student protests may appear at first glance to resemble that voiced by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

But Kerry, in fact, has voiced no criticism of British police and university officials.

He reserved his "disgust" for the "decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest ... with riot police, bulldozers, and batons, rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity."

Clearly the US Secretary of State is a man of double standards. What is acceptable on the streets of Britain is apparently a disgrace in the centre of Kiev.

Not that we should be surprised by his lack of political principle.

It is just two years since the Barack Obama administration, in which Kerry serves, used atrociously repressive measures against the Occupy Wall Street movement that took similar direct action to that of the pro-EU forces in Kiev.

It was only a year later in December 2012 that suspicions of a nationally co-ordinated crackdown headed by the FBI and involving the Department of Homeland Security, local police, university officials, city mayors and the Wall Street banks were confirmed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund following a freedom of information request.

Despite acknowledging that the Occupy movement was a peaceful organisation, FBI documents revealed its treatment as a "a potential criminal and terrorist threat."

The grand alliance of national securocrats, politicians, police and bankers jointly drew up scenarios for spying on US citizens before beating them up, arresting them or kettling them for long periods.

There were even plans to permit snipers to assassinate Occupy leaders, although the details have been "redacted" to protect the guilty.

Perhaps Kerry ought to have been worrying about the civil right of US citizens to protest effectively without being brutalised before he condemned the Ukrainian authorities.

Let it not be forgotten that the Kiev government has actually ordered its police to abandon efforts to end the occupation of city council offices and Independence Square for fear of escalating violence.

Britain's conservative coalition government ought to take a leaf out of Kiev's book in response to yesterday's "cops off campus" day of action.

But they will be unlikely to do so until student protests, backed up by other sections of society, become so large as to embarrass the government into action.

Ministers have already lost the arguments. That's why they and their allies have opted for repression.

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