One Year On: Ian Tomlinson Still No Justice

Sgt Delroy Smellie leaving court after being acquitted. Image: Daily Mirror

Today is the year anniversary of the death of Ian Tomlinson, his bereaved family like many others have been misled and discouraged from speaking by the police. Though there has been intense media coverage on this event, and it involves another territorial support group (TSG) officer, to date, the family are still awaiting justice.

On April 1st, 2009, I with 6 others and later thousands made our way to the City of London to demonstrate for people and the planet in response to the G20 meeting in London. Our slogan was “Nature Doesn’t Do Bail-Outs”, we going as prisoners of hope, believing with deep conviction, the unbelievable; that a rag-tag group of activists and students could make a difference on the international stage. Little did we know the cost it would take and what changes were before us.

Climate Camp called “The Great Climate Swoop”, an action against the newly launced “European Climate Exchange”, a EU backed Carbon Market which seeks to privatise the atmosphere for profit. Ian was an Evening Standard paper seller who had been working in the City and it was claimed by the Met approved autopsy that he died due to a heart attack, however it later was shown that the police were the primary cause of his death.

Almost 4 years after the death of Jean Charles De Menezes, another family but this time white English, are going through the same tricks that the Met used against the media in obstructing information from being revealed. The IPCC yet again is proving weak and toothless;

• Accepting excuses from the police that no CCTV was available (there was)
• Not asking serious questions on the “culture of impunity” surrounding the TSG
• Delaying the process to bring a single officer to be called into account
• Not investigating why misleading unverified (mis)information was being produced by the Met.

Maybe this isn’t surprising when the head of IPCC doesn’t believe that his casework managers need not to be legally qualified as it is not “was not essential for their work”

The public responded faster than the authorities with a vigil and they got greeted by the TSG with a beating for their sense of solidarity. Welcome to 21st Century Britain.

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