UFFC
Below is a video of Marcia Rigg, sister of Sean Rigg, who was murdered by Brixton police in 2008, speaking at Saturday's United Families & Friends Campaign annual procession:
I left Saturday's demo feeling quite depressed about the turnout and support. UFFC is a collective campaign uniting families and friends of those who died at the hands of the police, in custody or psychiatric hold. It's the kind of thing you imagine β you hope β would be widely supported by the left.
I don't want to get into the berating game: people have legitimate reasons for not turning out to things. I don't want to get into the game of measuring political work as a matter of turning out to demonstration after demonstration, either, with diminishing energy and effect for each one. But this isn't that. This is an annual procession that ought to see far more active solidarity than it does. It's not a matter of personal failure, it's the ubiquity of absence of the left β or, as a friend pointed out to me later that night, the white left β in support of this that leaves me puzzled. Well, perhaps not puzzled, exactly.
Yes, it is more important to support the ongoing, difficult and often painful work of justice campaigns, rather than turn out once a year and nod your head. That's a given. But it seems to me there's a skew in priorities when a piece of stunt-activism, or an absolutely useless and disconnected march, draws thousands in support. There were perhaps 150 people here for this, and I think that's worth reflecting on.
Organisations like UFFC and LCAPSVΒ do work on the effects of police and state violence and repression β I hope the energy that has gone in to LCAPSV translates also to some further support, however it may be needed, for UFFC. Some of these campaigns have been working on bringing the police and state to account for twenty years. And it would be good for revolutionaries, leftists β whatever β to hear some of the words and stories spoken at the procession too, certainly more important than most of your top-table speakers, or rally leaders at most demonstrations. It's not simply a memorial, or an act of grief or rage β but those things are intensely political, too, in the face of a state that seeks to erase the evidence of its murders, and block every avenue of holding its murderers to account, and deny even the faintest hint of justice.
