The police as militia, and the “policing by consent” deception

A long time ago, at the Luikkerland site that preceded FBEL, the police were labelled the “guardians of the Marxist revolution”. If only the author knew then what he does now. The police, in their activity, merely reflect the policies of the government of the day; they always have been political. This is why Sussex Police went to the trouble of decorating one of their vehicles in rainbow colours in support of a “Pride” parade – just imagine the reaction these days if Northern Ireland police painted their vehicles orange. Speaking of which, the latest show of UK police dedication to its enforcement of Equality and Diversity (which boils down to being an attack on the decent majority) was a tweet by the Ulster force which appeared to equate an encounter under mistletoe at Christmas (so, what might commonly be understood to be a kiss) is equivalent to rape. Some called it idiocy, but in fact it was yet another nudge for radical social engineering – that, as it happens, would not wash with the public. That’s why the tweet was deleted.

But even so, the decent citizen of the UK might be thinking lately that things have got so bad that the police are in fact dangerous, and it was way past time to withdraw the consent by which the British are policed. If the reader isn’t aware, the belief in the country is that the UK police are empowered by the consent of the general public. There is a Home Office webpage that gives a “definition of policing by consent” in the form of the ‘General Instructions’ that were issued to police in the 19th century – which will be referred to in the course of this article. The Home Office present these instructions wrapped by its own explanatory literature, which ends with this assertion: “no individual can chose to withdraw his or her consent from the police”. The reader might be surprised to learn that this appears to be true, but not for the reason the Home Office claims (they say that consent is common, and if that were true then you wouldn’t be able to refuse consent to being murdered if the majority wanted it). It also says that consent cannot be withdrawn from law, which is also true. But please notice, they do not try and tell the public that an individual cannot withdraw consent to legislation – and this is key.

Legislation (statutes and Acts) is not law. Law is that which stems from an individual’s rights – not to be attacked, murdered, robbed, or swindled; to summarise, law is about the protection of one party from the criminal intent of another. There is no withdrawal from this convention for common sense reasons: anyone who is attacked has a right to self-defence, even to the point of killing his attacker because he who embarks on a crime in law waives his own rights. In contrast, and there is no two ways about this, legislation is to enforce government policy – it is political by nature. While everyone is naturally subject to law, legislation can be selective, and as such can favour one group of society over another. Taking this to its logical conclusion, legislation, then, is potentially “one rule for us, and another rule for them”. But let us not beat about the bush – the potential has been realised in the UK. The British Government legislates in the Establishment’s best interests. It legislates for the its continued maintenance of power. In 2013, the author wrote a piece entitled In the UK, the few are protected in legislation, while most not protected by law, and the title sums up the problem very succinctly – and introduces another aspect. Legislation introduces measures which separate people from the law that should protect them (the abovementioned article discusses this reality in more detail – please do take the time to read it). The only way that this could come about is if people voluntarily accept legislation to be superior to law. Consequently, we don’t have to worry about the complications of “legal fictions” whereby the Freeman on the Land movement thinks folk become beholden to legislation. Consent to legislation is voluntary; full stop – and we are going to see this as we explore in this article the origins of the supposed “consent to be policed”. It’s not the police the British public consents to, it is the legislation. Of course, the Government will have a different take on withdrawal of consent in that regards – and that is where the police and other enforcement measures come in. But they aren’t irresistible, not by a long shot.

The aforementioned Home Office webpage sets out the “9 Principles of Policing” which is claimed to be the original codification of the philosophy of policing a “free country” incorporating the idea of consent. They are numbered one to nine, but we won’t deal with them in numerical order (or even all of them) but in a way which is more conducive for the discussion. And we start with number two:

To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

Notice that there is no mention of consent; the power of the police depends on the public approving of them, and respecting them. It will help at this stage to conduct a small thought experiment. Do the police stop trying to fulfil their functions when people don’t approve of their existence, actions or behaviour? The answer has got to be no. But to make sure, we will examine the contrast in meaning between the two words “consent” and “approval”. To give consent means to grant permission to act. To give approval means to like the action that takes place regardless. Approval is merely an expression connected to a measurement of how the action is regarded. If one disapproves, it doesn’t stop the action.

It is interesting to discover, then, that this literature, which is from 1829, amounts to modern Public Relations written in old fashioned language. The clause is really about the advantage of having public approval (which is a PR task that can be unrelated to the policing activity) for whatever it is the police sees fit to do  – and everyone thinks it is about the necessity of giving consent to be policed.

But the reader might well have wondered if it is a little too premature for the assertion made in the previous paragraph, given that there is a little conundrum still to solve. If power is dependent on approval, but approval can’t stop police function, how is it that police power is negatively impacted by disapproval? The answer to this will come, and the truth of  the assertion will not be affected.

First of all, let us ask two questions that arise from Paragraph 2 of the General Instructions: 1) How do police secure approval and respect? And 2) What are the duties and functions of police?

To answer the first, we should examine Paragraph 3:

To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

This appears to say that the public must feel that it is working on the same side of the police. This shared identification then engenders public respect and approval for police, naturally, because the public now believes that what is good for the police is also good for it. Now let’s take a closer look at what the co-operation involves: “securing observance of the laws”. On the face of it, this might look like the public’s assistance is needed to bring law-breakers to justice, but that is not what it is saying. The word “law” has been used in a generic way – what is meant is “legislation”. When it comes to law, then the public don’t even need the police, let alone any vice versa compliment. But the police do require public co-operation in securing the observance of legislation – and here we start to answer the conundrum slightly higher-up this page: police power is connected to compliance to legislation.

Moving to the second question, from Paragraph 1, the duties and functions of the police are to…

To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

It’s quite probable that when the paragraph refers to the words “their military”, it draws context from an introduction that isn’t published on the Home Office website.  From reading it as it is, Paragraph 1 confirms the sentiment expressed in Paragraph 3. It is not individuals who are repressed by military force in an attempt to prevent crime and disorder, it is the mob – or the general public – and the crime is political disorder. Government can legislate to create crime, so that the word is used in the paragraph shouldn’t make the reader automatically connect its usage with breaking of the law. As mentioned above, the public can stop crimes in law by their empowerment in law. In this respect, the police only have the same powers as the public, and there is a reminder of this in Paragraph 7:

To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

The modern reader might not realise that 1829 was still of that time when large crowds took grievances with Government into the street and tried to resolve them with violence. The author is reminded of the line in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth Bennett asks Colonel Forster if the militia were in Meryton to subdue the local population or defend them from the French. And it further occurs that the police were intended to be a replacement for the domestic sort of militia activity – but with a new approach: to prevent recourse to political violence, brought on by repugnance of injustices, and achieved through compliance with Acts of Parliament that regulate society. Ever since the restoration of the Crown, all military forces that weren’t under the command of the King have been banned – the Jacobite Rising was perhaps the last time there was an armed faction in the land that could threaten the status quo by force of arms. The police are the militia that enforce through the public’s consent to legislation – and here is the really cunning bit: we have seen that in reality, as far as law goes, the police only have the same powers as anyone else in the public. However, the enforcement of law has been used as a pretext for their existence. Their existence then provides opportunity for Government to enforce legislation. Britons don’t realise that when they abdicated, to the police, their responsibility to uphold the law, they created an opportunity for the Government to install and establish the new kind of repressive militia.

To provide another perspective (to aid understanding, hopefully) on the civil dysfunction that the existence of the police represents, here is an extract from the first FBEL article that dealt with the travesty that was the Bosham DNA harvest:

Well, we have a situation where the murder of an individual is taken as a pretext for the police, who have been set up as wardens for collectivised society (think communist, or communitarian), to appeal to the welfare of that collective. That being done, the rights of the individual are perceived as being unimportant. However, in our body politic as it should be, the rights of the individual should never come second to the collective because otherwise there would be tyranny. Claiming to be able to persecute people for the common good is an expression of authoritarianism, and that is what the Sussex Police have been doing in their Valerie Graves murder investigation.

Of course, people will respond to this by saying that the police must do a job and we must make sacrifices to allow them to do it. The answer to that is no. If our body politic was as healthy as it should be, then there would be a much stronger sense of individual responsibility that negates a requirement for the police-agent of government. Individual responsibility means relying on oneself to protect one’s family, neighbours and then offering that protection with others to the wider community. Valerie Graves’ death was arguably a failure of a society that has far too willingly deputised to government and abdicated too much power. This is why a public of individuals, expecting individual rights, do not have to feel it is their duty to effectively reinforce the guardian-warden position of the police.

Because the police represent a new way of repression through legislation, it doesn’t mean to say that violence by the State has been ruled out forever. Further evidence of the real nature of the UK police is conveyed in Paragraph 4 of the General Instructions:

To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

In short, the public’s co-operation (its compliance with legislation) negates the need for force. Or, police use force to effect punishment for non compliance with legislation. As we will see, in doing this the police are immune to public opinion, and at the point that the police use force, neither is there any protection in law for the public if they have not withdrawn consent for the legislation. Examine Paragraph 6:

To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

The author is given to understand that when dealing with what is supposed to criminal by legislation, the police persuade people into abandoning their lawful rights, after which they can prosecute the offence against the legislation – even to the point of using force. If the police use force in pursuit of a public that has, up to the point of the use of violence by police, consented to legislation, then the public doesn’t have a leg to stand on. However, surely police violence stays in a state of being against the law if the public do not consent to legislation from the first instance. It is only unlawful use of force by police that results in disapproval of the police – if the public perceive legal justification then the standing of the police won’t suffer whatever the magnitude of its wrongdoing. As we have seen, approval of the police is intrinsically linked to compliance with legislation. A violent police force – unlawfully so – induces extensive non-compliance because of the perceived injustice. This is why all of the public must be legislation-compliant, because if the police routinely have to resort to unlawful force, it will erode the community-wide legislation-complicity. Here, then, is the answer to the question “how is it that police power is negatively impacted by disapproval?” And understanding this is very important when strategising for what is coming next.

Police – the militia – are being rearmed now not because of crime as defined by law, but because of the threat that the Government perceives from the public and a potential mass rejection of legislation. Of course, the real excuse would never fly – hence the need to perpetrate false flag terror and blame it on Muslims. The British Government is obviously gearing for trouble on the streets. But this is a miscalculation (only useful if the Government fabricates escalation). With Brexit coming up, Britain will leave the EU, but the British Government will have legislated so that EU statute is applicable in Britain. Britons may feel that they have no inclination to obey it given that it is foreign legislation. Then, there may be cases whereby a Briton is denied something because of legislation that favours foreign nationals. There is much scope for Britons to feel the injustice, and refuse to comply with legislation that compels them, for instance, to pay their council tax. This approach would also satisfy criteria for action that people need to take in order to fight back against the Silent Weapons system as detailed in a recent FBEL article. Now, besides the police, the Government has instituted other means to enforce legislation, and local councils have their own punishment capacity to target legislation-compliant deviancy (meaning, punishing those who consent to legislation, and then break it). The author can declare that this punishment capacity by councils turns out to be fraudulent, and there is activity at the moment to discover more. However, it stands to reason that not paying tax is a right in law, and the public are persuaded to drop their objection and acquiesce to legislation. Taxpaying, then, is the quintessential example of being legislation-compliant.

Now, please read a reply that came back from the Ministry of Justice as it responded to a Freedom of Information request about withdrawing consent to be governed:

Parliament itself draws its legitimacy from a number of sources, not least of which is the participation of the majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom in its operation, through exercising their right to vote or by paying taxes.

The official verdict states that the Ministry of Justice did not have the information requested – but it clearly did. The reply states that not paying taxes is a means to delegitimize Parliament. Delegitimizing Parliament is actually withdrawal of consent for legislation writ large, because to reject legislation is to reject the authority of the people who produce it. What the extract recognises is that not voting† and not paying taxes have the same origin is the fundamental protection of law. Of course, one – not paying taxes – has the stigma of “law-breaking”, but it shouldn’t have because an individual has as much a right in law to do it as he does to not vote.  Now, the British Government has not made voting mandatory (it, too, would be by legislation) because it would, for many people, be a step too far in terms of violating individual liberty. And yet, they accept the expectation of Government to pay taxes?

† The time is also perhaps coming when the public needs to stop participating in elections.