The ugly scenes in Bristol last night make it plain to see that Britain can no longer turn a blind eye to a particular brand of political disorder. Violent clashes during the city’s ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstration – supposedly in protest against the Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill – resulted in 20 police officers being injured, burned-out police vans, and a police station being attacked. Two officers who were seriously injured suffered from broken ribs, a broken arm and a punctured lung.
So who was to blame for this violence? The chairman of Avon and Somerset Police Federation, Andy Roebuck, labelled last night’s anarchy a form of ‘unprecedented violence’. And the city’s mayor, Marvin Rees, described the rioters as ‘serial demo-attenders’. Yet neither description fully sums up the motives of those involved.
While Islamist extremism is the country’s prevailing terror threat (with far-right extremism being the fastest-growing), the threat of far-left violence is one which needs to be taken more seriously by the UK’s law enforcement institutions and security services.
Even an old-fashioned trade unionist like me can see it is high time that the government tackles the scourge of far-left disorder
This isn’t a popular point to make: when I wrote recently that Britain
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