The Battered Blue Line
As hundreds of thousands of people marched peacefully through central London in a rally against the government’s spending cuts on March 26th, a hundred or so vandals, thought to be extreme anarchists and anti-capitalists, rampaged nearby. Banks and upmarket retailers near The Economist’s offices still bear the scars of the mayhem. Not for the first time, the Metropolitan Police stands accused of mishandling the unrest.
Even when attacked with missiles – including, reportedly, ammonia-filled lightbulbs – officers were restrained. They stood off as shop fronts were trashed and small fires were lit. (Fewer than ten people have been charged for crimes relating to violence, though many more for the aggravated trespass of Fortnum & Mason, a department store in which demonstrators staged a mostly peaceful sit-in.) There seemed little excuse for being caught out by the trouble: it had been planned online; there was violence at a protest against higher university-tuition fees three months earlier.
Yet the police could be forgiven for feeling exasperated by this criticism. After all, their handling of some previous demonstrations in London was condemned as too harsh. The tactic of “kettling” protesters – detaining them for extended periods within cordons of officers – has attracted controversy. The case of Ian Tomlinson, who was pushed to the ground by a police officer during a protest in 2009 and later died, is the subject of an ongoing inquiry.
It might be impossible to strike a Goldilocks-style balance – neither too tolerant nor too tough – that would please everybody. But there is a palpable need for consistent rules of engagement. There are likely to be more big marches in the coming years, as the government’s cuts bite. Even Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton on April 29th is purportedly being targeted by unruly demonstrators.
On March 28th Theresa May, the home secretary, said that she would consider giving the police more powers for future protests. Preventive measures that helped to ease Britain’s once-endemic problem of football hooliganism could be adopted. For example, rogue elements could be banned from attending marches (though this would be harder to enforce than a ban on a hooligan entering a stadium). Mrs May hinted that the police should use existing powers to force protesters to remove the balaclavas and face-coverings often worn by rioters. Many would like her to go further. Andy Hayman, a former assistant commissioner of the Met, suggests dawn raids on known troublemakers’ homes.
New rules and powers, however, will only help to deal with the most hardened and violent rioters. A larger, trickier group are clever enough to cause trouble while staying within whatever laws prevail at the time. Disruption and intimidation that stops short of actual violence are becoming their speciality.
In any case, the allegedly lax line taken by the police towards the violence probably has less to do with their powers than with fears of being accused of brutality. Britain has lived through angry political epochs before: there were riots against the “poll tax” in 1990, for example. But in those days a police officer’s every action was not filmed on protesters’ mobile-phone cameras. The technology enables scrutiny. It also risks shaping a policing strategy that errs on the side of passivity.
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