Tommy Robinson, a self-invented English ‘patriot’, was free to attend yesterday’s St George’s Day event in central London which descended into ugly clashes between participants and police. Earlier in the day, he had been released from court after successfully arguing that a police dispersal order that resulted in his arrest and charge in November last year was unlawfully applied to him due to a paperwork blunder. He says he will now sue the Metropolitan police.
Robinson has nearly half a million followers on social media. They have, by now, fully absorbed the narrative that when it comes to protest, Britain has a two-tier system of policing. This is a dangerous accusation that is gaining traction, whatever the criminal justice boss class decide we should think. But is it justified?
Simply dismissing the charge of two-tier policing as far-right propaganda is dangerous and complacent
Yesterday’s police operation was proportionate to the circumstances. Robust action was taken against a minority of attendees who were clearly intent on engineering confrontation. The powers available to the police under our extensive and, some would argue draconian, public order legislation were used. A handful of far-right imbeciles who wouldn’t know St George if he fell out of the sky on top of them woke up this morning in custody nursing hangovers.
But there’s the rub. The actions of the police yesterday were proportionate when dealing with this form of disorder, but no-one can seriously argue that this same robust keeping of the King’s peace could be applied to the much larger and relentless pro-Palestinian marches.
Let’s start with some myth-busting. Police have arrested marchers during Gaza protests for public order offences including committing nakedly anti-Semitic offences. It’s also not correct to say that police haven’t used legislation to require Gaza marchers to remove face coverings as they did at yesterday’s St George’s Day event in Whitehall. In fact, there have been arrests of people under this legislation – Section 60aa of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. Dozens more have been arrested for other offences including racially aggravated ones.
But what would a proportionate response to pro-Palestinian rallies look like if the same tactics were deployed against marchers who regularly number in the tens of thousands and in whose midst are extremists seeking to demonise and dehumanise Israel, its citizens and by extension the tiny British Jewish minority now living in fear in this country? That is, of course, unless they have passed a purity test that puts them in step with those who were out on London’s streets celebrating the Hamas atrocity that started this cycle of protest on 7 October.
I don’t doubt that the vast majority of London’s finest would like nothing better than to get stuck into hate marchers of this kind with the same vigour as was on display from them yesterday in Whitehall. But they are hamstrung by the physics of modern mass demonstration.
Public order policing in London has absorbed and exhausted tens of thousands of police officers from the capital, as well as those bussed in from the provinces week in and out to manage massive demonstrations. I say ‘manage’ not ‘police.’ The Peelian principle of policing without fear or favour has all but collapsed under the insurmountable weight of numbers and potential offences.
The reality is that there are simply not enough cops on the ground to intervene and arrest people behaving in an abusive or threatening ways either in deed or by displaying signs. The mass chorus of the avowedly anti-Semitic chant of ‘from the river to the sea’ calling for the destruction of Israel, and by extension its Jewish people, by violent means is simply too big to fail. Central London is closed down and cordoned off. Openly Jewish people are threatened with arrest to keep them safe when they exercise lawful rights to walk the streets. Ordinary front-line policing, under extreme pressure as it is, buckles further with officers constantly taken away from ordinary crime fighting. There are more tiers here than a wedding cake.
This form of policing by pragmatism, not principle, creates a paradox not lost on those who want to weaponise the issue. The Met frequently congratulates pro-Palestinian protesters for their peaceful intent because, in part, police cannot or will not intervene when the law is being broken in front of them with impunity. The likely chain reaction of such intervention would cause a full-scale riot beyond the capacity of a lightly armed and overstretched tactical response. The lack of political cover from London’s Mayor and the impotence of the Home Secretary add to a picture of law enforcement that is hobbled when more than a few hundred part-time football hooligans come out to play.
Simply dismissing the charge of two-tier policing as far-right propaganda is dangerous and complacent. This perception is firmly in place, whatever the nuances and challenges of public order policing.
The Met can demonstrate in deeds, not fumbling press releases, that their detractors are wrong. They have yet another chance to do so this weekend. We must allow people to peacefully protest the awful suffering of people in Gaza. We should also apply the law equally to people within these protests who threaten public peace with malevolent intent, whatever the scale of the challenge and however much this upsets progressive opinion. This includes the will of prosecutors and judges to show that a culture of impunity in mass demonstrations will not be allowed to grow. We should, but can we? All eyes will be on the Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and his colleagues this weekend.
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