the story of the killings of Black sisters Nicole Smallman & Bibaa Henry is so horrendous. the Met Police refused to take seriously the fact of them being missing, then when *friends* found them dead, police officers took selfies with their bodies and shared them online.

this is totally consistent with a the persistent structure of racialised and gendered state violence and male violence in this society and specifically throughout British policing since forever.

we're encouraged by the coverage to applaud how "brave" and "articulate" bereaved Black mothers are in the aftermath of endless cycles of racist violence and dehumanisation.

but the coverage, the momentary sympathy, the solemn official statements, even the odd sacking, only make more clear that no one is committed to even the possibility that things will or can change.

for me, this also flags up a huge gaping violence at the heart of the left in Britain. namely, the relationship between the two main left traditions in this country - labourism and trotskyism - and the police/policing as such.

when i shared the tweet below, it wasn't to overly praise the DSA - i know a lot less about the US scene - but really to condemn the left here - or what UK Black Power groups termed the "white left" in the 60s & 70s. https://twitter.com/Sisyphusa/status/1272583595794870272?s=20

because i really, really cannot imagine left groups here even talking up a good game on abolition, let alone prioritising it and acting on it and truly acting in solidarity.

the labourist tradition is entirely committed to a more or less unchanged organisation of society with regard to policing. a "socialist" Labour Party committed to increasing the number of officers as well as border guards.

and anyone who's done any antifascist work knows how closely certain trotskyist parties work with the police or how they like to go to radical Black events and lecture attendees on class unity.

the UFFC March has happened every year for decades and other than a few activists and anarchists it is still largely populated by the friends and families of the ever-growing number of people who have been killed in police and state custody.