Institute of
Race Relations says MoD’s Channel role reflects global rise of
‘hyper-militarisation’ in law enforcement
Haroon
Siddique Legal affairs correspondent
Sun 25 May
2025 07.00 CEST
The UK
Border Force is in effect under military command, reflecting a wider increase
of “hyper-militarisation” in policing, according to a new report on
international law enforcement.
A report by
the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), timed to coincide with the fifth
anniversary of George Floyd’s death, says the 21st century has seen the
emergence of paramilitary and “political” policing across Europe, employed at
borders, during civil unrest and against public protest.
It cites the
Home Office’s 2020 request for Ministry of Defence (MoD) support and the
creation within the Border Force of a new post of clandestine Channel threat
commander as evidence of the Channel becoming “hyper-militarised”.
Liz Fekete,
the director of the IRR and the report’s author, said: “What they have begun at
the border does not end at the border.
“First, the
government portrays asylum seekers arriving in small boats in an already
militarised Channel as a national security threat. The plan to allow French
police to push back boats in the Channel can only lead to more injuries, more
deaths.
“Second, we
know that plastic bullets (still used in Northern Ireland) have already been
authorised for use at the Notting Hill carnival and BLM (Black Lives Matter)
protests of 2020 and that, since then, BLM protests have been subjected to
baton charges, horse charges and pepper spray, and that student occupations for
Palestine have been violently suppressed.
“Third, we
know that discrete firearms units have been created within crime fighting units
(recall the deaths of Mark Duggan and Chris Kaba) and that Jean Charles de
Menezes died as a result of the ‘shoot to kill’ approach of Operation Kratos.
“This is why
we are saying to the government today that ‘it’s time to take stock’. For this
is demonstrably not policing by consent.”
The report
says the MoD’s oversight for policing small-boat crossings in the Channel has
“effectively [put] elements of the UK Border Force under military command”. In
support of this analysis, it also highlights Keir Starmer’s announcement last
year that he was giving Border Security Command counter-terrorism powers to
deal with people-smuggling, and Drone Watch UK’s written evidence to the House
of Commons defence committee in which it said that the Channel had been
militarised through the use of military-grade drones.
Another
theme of the report, titled Paramilitary Policing Against the People, is the
“creeping” growth of “less-lethal weaponry”, which can nevertheless cause
life-changing injuries, such as Tasers, which were introduced to policing in
England and Wales in 2003, Northern Ireland in 2008 and Scotland in 2018.
The report
discusses 69 deaths of migrants, refugees and other racialised people across
Europe through the use of such weaponry, mostly asylum seekers from sub-Saharan
Africa at the Spanish-Moroccan border. The weaponry is often used in public
order situations, it says.
Kojo
Kyerewaa, a national organiser for Black Lives Matter UK, said: “Only racism
can explain the British state’s fear of Black people on the streets.
“The Met’s
5,900 plastic bullets and 700 officers trained to fire them are not ‘public
safety’ tools. They are instruments of racial terror. When we flooded the
streets to denounce police brutality, the Home Office aimed those very weapons
at us – weapons proven to blind, maim and kill. This is not an oversight. This
is their vicious racist designs against us.”
The Met
previously said it was “inaccurate and irresponsible to imply the ethnicity of
those likely to be involved in an event or protest influences the tactics
considered”.
A Home
Office spokesperson said: “Britain has a long tradition of operational
independence for the police who keep our streets safe. Any use of their powers
is an operational decision.”
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