50 signatures reached
To: Ayoub Khan MP
Stop Operation Fearless! Stop & Search, Immigration Enforcement Out of Handsworth
An immediate end to Operation Fearless.
An end to racist policing, stop-and-search, and police brutality.
An end to deportations, immigration enforcement and surveillance.
The ruling class has shown that is unwilling and unable to solve poverty, homelessness, addiction, and inequality.
We must therefore build a movement and fight for housing, healthcare, education, youth services, and decent jobs.
An end to racist policing, stop-and-search, and police brutality.
An end to deportations, immigration enforcement and surveillance.
The ruling class has shown that is unwilling and unable to solve poverty, homelessness, addiction, and inequality.
We must therefore build a movement and fight for housing, healthcare, education, youth services, and decent jobs.
Why is this important?
Operation Fearless has flooded Handsworth with racist policing, stop-and-search and immigration enforcement, tactics which since the 1980s have only served to deepen inequality in our community. Police brutality has already been officially reported since the Operation began. Hotspot policing is a tried, tested, and failed tactic that those living in Handsworth for decades are all too familiar with:
In the 2000s, when stop-and-search was expanded in Handsworth, did that stop the decline of our communities? Did increased police powers in 2022 stop the selling off of our community centres? The closing of our A&E units? The selling off of our council homes? Or are things worse than ever as a result of decades of cut services and criminalisation of those at the receiving end of those cuts? Crimes of desperation are symptoms of deprivation. If you treat these symptoms as criminal offences, rather than addressing the root cause, it just traps vulnerable communities in cycles of fines, criminal records, and marginalisation, blocking access to housing and employment.
As we heard on 23rd May, at the Stop Operation Fearless protest, the Handsworth community is already aware of all this. It’s no surprise that countless homeless people have been harassed by the police as a result of Operation Fearless. No surprise that asylum seekers and migrant workers have reported that they are scared to walk the streets due to the immigration raids of the Operation. And no surprise that residents report the parks empty, and report disgust at the brutality they’ve witnessed from the police.
The one thing Operation Fearless does, however, is provide councillors and MPs with neatly packaged short-term statistics for their reports while turning a blind eye to the long-term deepening of poverty caused by Operation Fearless, which cost nearly £1 million. This is money that could have gone to any of the underfunded medical centres in the area, such as Orsborn House, an already ragged safety net for mental health, without which the slope into homelessness becomes a pipeline. You cannot police away poverty.
Black and Asian people are the first to be targeted by stop-and-search, while the most vulnerable amongst us such as asylum seekers and migrant workers bear the brunt of the violence of immigration enforcement, largely unseen and unheard. Yet, Labour boasts about their record levels of deportations since being in power, over 60,000. All the while, the drivers of poverty are left untouched, and in fact are deepened by criminalisation.
We have to counter the lie that more police equals safer streets. The police are institutionally racist and sexist, as evidenced by the multiple counts of sexual abuse of women by West Midlands Police officers, reports spanning decades on the police's treatment of trans people, and the violent brutality shown by police when defending racist groups like Britain First. From Paddy Hill, to Satpal Ram, to Kingsley Burrell, to Marcus Meade, it is clear that 'safety' is the last thing that comes from 'more bobbies on the beat.
The police's role is to protect private property and the needs of capital, and in times of crisis it becomes necessary for them to ramp up their violence against working class people to maintain the capitalist status quo.
Handsworth has long suffered poverty caused by underinvestment, insecure housing, collapsing public services, the hostile environment and unemployment, which all come together to create conditions in which people can be exploited into the worst paid jobs. When migrant labour is not needed by the economy, they are violently expelled.
When the consequences of these conditions show up in our neighbourhoods, those responsible, the British state, send police instead of resources, showing what they think of us.
So let’s loudly let the West Midlands Police, Your Party director Ayoub Khan MP, and Labour, Green & Independent councillors Shuranjeet Singh, Ed Freshwater and Rinkal Shergill who support Operation Fearless know what we think, just like we did on 23rd May! Sign as an individual or get in touch to lend your organisational support below.
STOP OPERATION FEARLESS NOW!
Organisation Signatures as of 25.06.26
Regularise
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Birmingham
Life of a People Project
Indian Workers' Association (GB)
Birmingham Queers For Palestine
India Labour Solidarity
Young Struggle Birmingham
Kashmir Diaspora UK
In the 2000s, when stop-and-search was expanded in Handsworth, did that stop the decline of our communities? Did increased police powers in 2022 stop the selling off of our community centres? The closing of our A&E units? The selling off of our council homes? Or are things worse than ever as a result of decades of cut services and criminalisation of those at the receiving end of those cuts? Crimes of desperation are symptoms of deprivation. If you treat these symptoms as criminal offences, rather than addressing the root cause, it just traps vulnerable communities in cycles of fines, criminal records, and marginalisation, blocking access to housing and employment.
As we heard on 23rd May, at the Stop Operation Fearless protest, the Handsworth community is already aware of all this. It’s no surprise that countless homeless people have been harassed by the police as a result of Operation Fearless. No surprise that asylum seekers and migrant workers have reported that they are scared to walk the streets due to the immigration raids of the Operation. And no surprise that residents report the parks empty, and report disgust at the brutality they’ve witnessed from the police.
The one thing Operation Fearless does, however, is provide councillors and MPs with neatly packaged short-term statistics for their reports while turning a blind eye to the long-term deepening of poverty caused by Operation Fearless, which cost nearly £1 million. This is money that could have gone to any of the underfunded medical centres in the area, such as Orsborn House, an already ragged safety net for mental health, without which the slope into homelessness becomes a pipeline. You cannot police away poverty.
Black and Asian people are the first to be targeted by stop-and-search, while the most vulnerable amongst us such as asylum seekers and migrant workers bear the brunt of the violence of immigration enforcement, largely unseen and unheard. Yet, Labour boasts about their record levels of deportations since being in power, over 60,000. All the while, the drivers of poverty are left untouched, and in fact are deepened by criminalisation.
We have to counter the lie that more police equals safer streets. The police are institutionally racist and sexist, as evidenced by the multiple counts of sexual abuse of women by West Midlands Police officers, reports spanning decades on the police's treatment of trans people, and the violent brutality shown by police when defending racist groups like Britain First. From Paddy Hill, to Satpal Ram, to Kingsley Burrell, to Marcus Meade, it is clear that 'safety' is the last thing that comes from 'more bobbies on the beat.
The police's role is to protect private property and the needs of capital, and in times of crisis it becomes necessary for them to ramp up their violence against working class people to maintain the capitalist status quo.
Handsworth has long suffered poverty caused by underinvestment, insecure housing, collapsing public services, the hostile environment and unemployment, which all come together to create conditions in which people can be exploited into the worst paid jobs. When migrant labour is not needed by the economy, they are violently expelled.
When the consequences of these conditions show up in our neighbourhoods, those responsible, the British state, send police instead of resources, showing what they think of us.
So let’s loudly let the West Midlands Police, Your Party director Ayoub Khan MP, and Labour, Green & Independent councillors Shuranjeet Singh, Ed Freshwater and Rinkal Shergill who support Operation Fearless know what we think, just like we did on 23rd May! Sign as an individual or get in touch to lend your organisational support below.
STOP OPERATION FEARLESS NOW!
Organisation Signatures as of 25.06.26
Regularise
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Birmingham
Life of a People Project
Indian Workers' Association (GB)
Birmingham Queers For Palestine
India Labour Solidarity
Young Struggle Birmingham
Kashmir Diaspora UK
