Let’s send a message…
That was what Cameron said a little after this time last year: let’s send a message that rioting and looting were both behaviours that would not be tolerated.
And thus it was. The courts sat late and long: ne’erdowells were handed down ultra-tough sentences; and amessage was well and trulty sent.
Just as Cameron now is sending the opposite message in a way almost guaranteed to have London ablaze this August. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh. Did i fail to take seriously the subject? My apologies.
Still, its this association i make, every term i hear the word “robust”, with “rotund”. I think of the ludicrous “Theophilus Goon”, a bumbling police character in Enid Blyton’s Mystery books. Or the laughing policeman. Or a host of jovial comedy policemen that have graced British film from the earliest of days.
But its “robustness” that politicians are demanding right now, and i am a tad puzzled as to what they might mean.
Robust practices
They surely can’t be thinking of the approach employed by the Chicago Police back in the 60′s, which were certainly robust. Also unlawful, brutal and violent.
Perhaps they mean “taking no chances”: so police should shoot first, as they appear to have done with a certain Brazilian electrician and latterly, just before this rioting kicked off, with Mark Duggan in Tottenham; and they should ask questions after.
On the other hand, that approach could see the body count rise rapidly, whilst public confidence would fall.
Perhaps they mean being less prepared to listen, and having no truck with bleeding heart liberals and alleged rape victims. Ooops! Did i mention rape? Cause this appalling story of Layla Ibrahim, jailed for “wasting police time” in the matter of her own alleged rape, seems pretty robust and no-nonsense to me.
Could it mean not bothering with silly stuff, like the actual detail of statute. So, as i have reported on time and time again over the last couple of years, we will see yet more instances of police unlawfully stopping people trying to take photos, unlawfully seizing their cameras, and unlawfully destroying film.
Hey! Maybe it means zero tolerance of ANY wrong-doing. So when police do commit crim damage (as above) we won’t hear any of this namby-pamby nonsense about IPCC investigations. We’ll just fire the officer and charge them, as appropriate.
And as for politicians who fiddle expenses and News of the World Management. Puh-lease! They’ll be down the station tonight, helping polie with their inquiries. Or else.
Political blether
I know. At this point, some of you are reading this as an anti-police diatribe. But actually, it ain’t. Its much more of an anti-politician thing.
Just listen to what the police themselves have been saying. Up pops Cameron with a bright idea about using rubber bullets and water cannon: Hugh Orde, ACPO chief and an experienced copper patiently explains how pointless such things would have been.
In the end, i really have a hard time working out just what extra the police were meant to be doing last week.
Many of the supposedly exceptional powers that politicians say they needed were in place and used. I am hearing very few calls from the police themselves for massive new legal powers.
The main criticism seems to be they didn’t go in “hard enough” – is that what robust is meant to mean? But i’ve tackled that elsewhere. If police have a failing, it is that they are unable to respond nimbly enough to fast-moving situations. But possibly that is true of any police force, anywhere in the world.
No. In the end, this all feels like meaningless soundbite. I don’t know what “robust” policing would look like or how different it would look from the current model.
I have yet to hear any politicians spell it out in detail.
Maybe that’s the point. They haven’t a clue.
But it sounds good.
And meanwhile, it is just possible that community policing between the riots isn’t such a bad thing after all – and we would all benefit from a few more happy – and rotund – police officers on the beat.
jane
xx
Announcing the launch of a bold new police procedural crime caper series.
You will laugh: you will cry at the comic chaos that ensues when a British Prime Minister, desperate to put an end to a total disrespect for his authority (Boris Johnson) sends for top US cop Bill Bratton – and accidentally ends up employing his bumbling younger brother Ben instead.
Now read on. . .
Episode 1: Desperately Seeking Bratton
In which Prime Minister Dave Cameron is snubbed, mocked and harangued by his evil twin and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
Ignoring warnings that his rolodex is broken – and in need of some tough love – he orders officials to send an urgent telegram to America, summoning top cop, Bill Bratton to his side.
Their invitation lands, instead, on the desk of small-town sheriff, and Bill’s younger, dumber, brother, Ben . Impressed, inebriated and in a hurry to escape his creditors, Ben catches the next plane to London, where a mix-up at the taxi rank sees him dropped off at Soho gay bar, the Westminster Palace.
His consternation deepens as he discovers that “rimming” is not a UK police tactic for containing rioters and his mission almost ends then and there, as he misunderstands a polite request for a fag – and shoots a passer-by in the head.
Disaster is averted at the last minute with the surprise arrival of his brother Bill, in London for a weekend to attend a convention of the International Riot Shield Spotters Association.
Ben makes his way to Downing St and. . . the game is afoot.
Cast (in order of appearance):
David Cameron Rik Mayall
Ben Bratton George Gaynes
Boris Johnson Johnny Vegas
Bill Bratton Sean Connery
And don’t miss. . .
Episode 2: Bill and Ben (and Boris) make free
In which evil genius and Mayor of London Boris Johnson seeks to prove that Ben is really Lesley Nielsen – and have him locked up for cannibalism.
All looks bleak for Ben, as he is found downstairs at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, with a knife and fork, stood over the decaying remains of the Liberal Democrat Party.
Disaster is averted at the last minute with the arrival of brother Bill, who has just touched down in London for the start of a two-week contract to train Prime Minister Dave in the art of tying his own shoelaces.
Special Guest appearance by Harriet Harman as herself (Pussy Galore)
Apologies…i just couldn’t resist. 
jane
xx
Now that the riots are becoming history, and commentary is moving inexorably toward kneejerk explanation – and equally kneejerk proposals for dealing with future outbreaks – the world and its wife is busy issuing and contemplating sugegstions that range from the vaguely helpful to the utterly barking.
One i hadn’t heard til today, and which has a certain superficial plausibility to it is the idea that police should just spray all those attending a riot with an indelible dye. It would then be possible to pick up assorted ne’erdowells at a later date on the simple test of whether they carried this modern age Mark of Cain somewhere about their person.
I say superficially plausible, because i’d be intrigued to see how this would work in court at a later date: when, f’rinstance, some individual is hauled up before the magistrates with no evidence whatsoever provided as to their behaviour beyond the fact that they had been splatted, paintball style.
The opportunities for legal miscarriage seem legion.
As, it seems, the likelihood of counter claims by those legitimately present for some reason, whose clothes had been ruined by indiscriminate police spraying.
Its a long while since i did street journalism, getting out and about and following the mob. And i’d hardly dress up in my Sunday best if i did. But still, i think i’d be pretty pissed off if, just doing my job, i had a decent outfit stained forever in this way.
And i guess it all depends on just how “mindless” you think these actions are. Commentators seem, currently, to oscillate between self-satisfied rhetoric, condemning all and sundry as mindless thugs, with not a rational thought in their head – and paranoid outburst, retailing stories about organised criminal gangs, answerable to some shadowy Doc Evil behind the scenes.
Of course, its probably a bit of both. But still, in the rapidly growing divide between Good and Evil that the press are revealing to us, it cannot be beyond our intelligence to imagine that the “forces of Evil”, too, possesses a few thoughtful individuals on their side.
So, sure: bring on the new Judge Dredd style police, with their cry of “Dye, sucker!”
But how long before some rioters, some fellow travellers, lay their hands on stocks of the same chemical – and wreak their revenge by colouring in innocent shoppers.
Perhaps paint bombs will become the latest form of direct action.
And if the police go down this route, can it be long before some wag decides that the members of the Bullingdon Club deserve to dye.
Now there’s a thought: police eventually rounding up some of the country’s richest hooray henry’s for no better reson than that they are persons of colour.
No. I can see how this idea might have some traction: but i can also see it having some very unintended consequences.
jane
xx
Back in 1972, a landmark book – “Folk Devils and Moral Panics” – took a long hard look at the confrontations between mods and rockers in the early ’60′s.
Whilst nowhere near as universal or as destructive as this week’s events, they nonetheless scared the decent law-abiding Daily Express populace – and in an eerie pre-echo of recent violence, they gave rise to all manner of ludicrous theorising about the nature of the action and the motivation of those taking part.
Believing what one wants to hear
One meme that quickly entered popular consciousness was a perpetrator arrested, brought before the courts and required to pay a fine. As myth had it, this individual laughingly pulled out a cheque book and offered to pay then and there.
Sorted: the complacent majority instantly knew that all these bad youths were really affluent types who had no respect at all for law and order.
Less publicised was the denouement of this incident: the revelation that the guy was making it up. He didn’t have the wherewithal to write down his punishment with one swift flourish of the pen: and even if he had, he was quite atypical of the majority of those taking part.
The Middle class rioter
Flash forward to today, and already the exceptions are hitting the headlines. We read about teaching assistants, law students and ballerinas involved in the riots precisely BECAUSE they are the exception.
If it were indeed the case that a significant proportion of Monday’s rioting was carried out by the militant wing of the Bolshoi, i would be both flabbergasted and… impressed beyond words.
The majority of those involved were a mix of the usual suspects – from criminal to criminally bored: they were rioting for the usual reasons – sometimes sheer greed, occasionally some degree of necessity, most often, i guess, because everyone else was at it and for a brief interlude, the belief arose that behaviour that was exciting and fun and possibly gainful was beyond punishment.
Still, i thoroughly expect to be taunted at future dinner parties with the assertion of certain knowledge that 99% of the rioters had no need whatsoever to be out there rioting…were, in fact, no more than the edgier iresponsible elements of the middle classes out slumming it for the night.
Riots are always with us
There is a second way in which we are already treating the exceptional as the norm. These riots were exceptional. They are far from unique: Britain has seen many instances of rioting over the years – but usually separated by a decade or two between serious outbreaks.
Do i really think we are on the verge of an age of riots unless, praise be to Cameron, we instantly implement emergency laws to stop it?
Er, no.
One of two things seems likely to be true after this week. Either August 2011 will turn out to be highly exceptional: another of those once in a couple of decades outbreaks, which tell us very little about the state of youth in modern Britain.
Or it will be but the first of a long-running wave of riots, springing up whenever, wherever policing drops below some critical threshold for preventing them.
In the first case, i really don’t wish to see any special measures being put in place: don’t much see the point of most of the special measures now in the pipeline, beyond clamping down on other more legitimate forms of protest, behind a smokescreen of “doing something”.
In the second, kneejerk reaction now seems about as useful as sitting on the sea shore and ordering the waves to retreat. If some sections of UK society are SO disaffected that they will now riot at the drop of a hat and continue to do so regardless, they won’t be stopped by the application of half a dozen sticking plaster measures hastily dreamt up and as hastily announced to parliament two days later.
The one thing i suspect is not exceptional about this week’s events is the fact they took place in august. Long summer days, moderate temperatures, and loads of young people with no school commitment to keep them even partially pre-occupied has always been a contributor to riot.
Which suggests the authorities should look not to policing tonight or tomorrow night…but be watching very closely the long range weather forecasts for August Bank Holiday.
jane
xx
It was, i think, during my O-level year that my then History teacher, Charles Blount (pronounced “blunt”, and therefore for fairly obvious schoolboy reasons, nicknamed “the count”) introduced me to the notion that the Second World War hadn’t been all bad – at least not economically.
I have to confess to not really being sufficiently qualified to tell whether he was talking any sense or whether his views on WWII, as those on Marx and Marxism, were in any way insightful – or but the ramblings of a reactionary historian forever frustrated that his own literary output had been trumped by the likes of A J P Taylor and Corelli Barnett.
Still, the nub of his argument was that in 1939, Europe and much of the world was still struggling to extract itself from the long-term effects of the depression: and that by blowing up a large part of its capital base, Europe then laid the ground for subsequent pump-priming and capital injection that bore fruits in the 50′s and 60′s. Nothing, i guess, like the long view of history.
Though i have encountered echoes of this very point elsewhere in the economy. It was a standard plaint of Young Liberal Conferences of the 70′s that the way we measured growth was laden with negative values. That road accidents were, in theory, good for gdp, since ploughing your new car into the back of someone else’s new car would generate demand for two replacement vehicles, plus demand for ambulance services, hospital services and probably a host of other add-on services as well.
Because gdp measured economic activity irrespective, destroying things could sometimes have a positive knock-on effect.
Which brings us neatly to last night’s orgy of mindless (?) violence. Putting aside the emotional trauma (which may nonetheless stimulate the therapy sector and create additional demand for counselling and psych services) just how bad, economically, is some of the destruction?
Take the Croydon furniture sellers, who have been on the news pretty much since midnight, bemoaning the way in which a business built up over five generations has been torched. Assuming they are insured – even at simple replacement value – they have just turned over their entire stock in one fell swoop. They have converted uncertain stock assets into cash assets at a point in the economic cycle when cash might be a safer commodity to be holding. And they have received the most incredible public exposure which may yet convert into future business.
Heartless? Ye-es. But the question i am asking…am intrigued by, actually, is how events like last night are likely to play in the wider economy.
Utterly tragic, of course, if your private home has been burnt down: and there is, of course, no real trade-off between personal fear and economic advantage.
But how much damage have the riots done really? To the communities within which they took place? And to the wider economy?
jane
xx
In the wake of last night’s Tottenham rioting, a spokesman for Downing St is reported on the news today as stating:
“There is no justification for the aggression the police and the public faced, or for the damage to property. There is now a police investigation into the rioting and we should let that process happen.”
Oh, hear! hear! Is that the sound of Hooray Henry’s i hear clapping in the background?
Get ready for wilful misinterpretation
I know. What i write next is undoubtedly going to be misinterpreted, in some cases by the illiterate tendency (who are more than capable of reading “white” and hearing “black”) and in others by the mischievous: by right-wingers and police spokespersons who quite clearly hear “white”, but for reasons best known to themselves then claim to have heard “black”.
So here’s the opening caveat. I write about the police. Loads. Most of those at the coal face do a good job. Most are decent ordinary men and women who sometimes get things wrong and who sometimes also make things wronger because we live, nowadays, in a culture in which the slightest hint of blame for something going wrong is instant career death.
Incidents where a reasonable person might just go “ooops, sorry: we got that wrong!” and move on now become full-blown matters for inquiry, with demands for resignation and “serious consequences” if anyone DID do anything remotely wrong.
The lawless police
That culture is, itself, wrong. It means that a part of our society that ought to be cleaner than clean as far as probity is concerned now automatically takes refuge in obfuscation the moment any poor decision they make is questioned.
And the police track record in such stuff is not good. Dozens of people killed in error by police over the last decade: not one instance to date of any police officer rebuked for same. Reports of police wrongdoing instantly shut down by one of the sharpest sets of lawyers in town – those employed by rank and file Police Trade Union, the Police Federation. Police investigating themselves via the IPCC.
Police regularly breaking the law when it comes to matters like public photography – yet rarely apologising and, in some cases (step forward City Police) not even having the decency to admit that they have broken the law.
You get the idea?
The police – and the politicians behind the police – for whom not only the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law ought to be seen as their ultimate moral beacon have instead descended into a culture of buck-passing, abdication of responsibility and let’s back the police right or wrong.
Which takes us where?
Well, it doesn’t take us into territory where people should advocate putting the boot in, throwing bombs or anything else. Though i thoroughly expect some people to misrepresent this post as saying just that.
Time for realism about policing
However, it does take us back into political ethics and political realism. First, the ultimate justification for direct action against the authorities has always been seen as those times when the authorities fail to allow for democratic processes that allow for them to be questioned. The recent record of the police seems to be drifting perilously close to same. And whether we have ACTUALLY reached that point, public perception is perhaps growing that we have.
Maybe in polite debating circles amongst the chattering classes, we can make nice distinctions proving we are nowhere near there. But on the streets of Tottenham, as the police shoot one more individual and people make the reckoning that, on past form, the chances of ANY meaningful investigation of that episode is next to nil, what alternative presents itself OTHER than to riot.
And second, it is clear that there is one law for the police, one law for the rest of us. Just flick back to events around recent protests and the way in which the police simply lied in order to clear protesters out of Fortnum and Mason.
Again, public perception matters: and if the public come to realise that the police can lie, abuse the law, and inflict violence with impunity, then the consequences are inevitable. More Tottenhams, more violently executed.
Against that, plummy-voiced condemnations from Downing St may make a certain sort of right-wing, self-satisfied politician feel better about themselves: but it says nothing to the reality on the streets today.
jane
xx
