Goodbye Transparency

But a recent meeting on police violence at Climate Camp, called by the Lib Dem MP David Howarth, illustrates just how woefully inadequate transparency on its own is at checking the abuse of authority. Howarth's presentation – which included a short video comprising footage from the BBC, Sky news, and many citizen journalists' cameras – showed how the extraordinary police presence at last summer's Climate Camp near Kingsnorth power station in Kent led to a series of abuses of power.The video showed police harassment of journalists, beatings dealt to unresisting peaceful protesters, humiliating and unwarranted search procedures, unjustifiable seizure of personal property, and so on. The police – 1,400 officers from 26 forces – justified all this force by characterising the Climate Campers as violent rioters, noting that 70 police officers had been injured while on duty at the event (it was subsequently revealed that the officers were "injured" by sunstroke, insect bites, etc – no injuries are attributed to scuffles with the protesters).And here's where transparency breaks down. We've known about all this since last August – seven months and more. It was on national news. It was on the web. Anyone who cared about the issue knew everything they needed to know about it. And everyone had the opportunity to find out about it: remember, it was included in national news broadcasts, covered in the major papers – it was everywhere.And yet ... nothing much has happened in the intervening eight months. Simply knowing that the police misbehaved does nothing to bring them to account.