The lady doth protest

The classic symptom of middle age is droning on that things aren't as they used to be; mourning for the good old days. My symptom is rather different '“ complete rage and despair that things appear to be precisely the same. The names and initials are different: instead of Blair Peach, unidentified riot police, the Special Patrol Group (SPG) and police violence against unarmed protesters, we have Ian Tomlinson, unidentified riot police, the Territorial Support Group (TSG) and police violence against unarmed protesters. We still have horses and dogs, and men, paid by the state to protect society, who are so out of control they use sticks and shields against the peaceful young.

But we do now have a pleasing irony: the police demand for more and more surveillance equipment and their own obsessive use of film is matched by the public's access to mobile phones, videos and digital film. The flood of images about G20 is some protection for our civil liberties.

Freedom of expression

The right to protest is not a mere formula for the well behaved '“ it must not be limited to standing in a small, silent group hidden from view and ringed by police officers who can nick you if you move an inch to the left or right. The right to protest and the right of peaceful assembly are properly strident and demanding '“ it is the right to stomp in large numbers around the streets we pay for, to be noisy in defence of our aims and ideals, to be rude, or playful or even downright insolent in the expression of our views.

It may be inconvenient and expensive to have to police this right, and embarrassing to host world leaders in a city heaving with resentment, but the heavy-handed policing of G20 was conducted without judgment, without discrimination, and without respect for fundamental liberties. Whatever isolated violent actions were going on elsewhere '“ and why no one thought to have a cop or two outside banks or to advise they were boarded up is beyond me '“ Climate Camp at Bishopsgate was a paradigm of creative, entertaining and effective protest. A few hundred yards of the City mushroomed with bright little tents, bicycle-powered sound systems, a free food stall with organic cookies, a goodish stab at loos, banners, flags and flowers, meetings, collective decisions, intelligent concerns, sambas, an endearingly bad string trio, and a flute or two.

And at seven pm someone ordered that riot police push their way in, and 'kettle' the lot. Kettling is a process sanctioned, in a remarkably unprescient judgment, by the House of Lords in Austin (Austin and another v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2009] UKHL 5) and is the practice of trapping demonstrators within cordons and keeping them there.

May Day: a 'necessary response to violence'

Austin arose from the May Day 2001 demonstrations, where the police held a large crowd behind Oxford Circus for seven hours. The case was fairly fact specific '“ the demonstration was violent, the police lost control and cordoned people off to regain it. The House of Lords held the cordons were legitimate restraint rather than a deprivation of liberty under Art.5; that the cordons were imposed purely for crowd control purposes, to protect people and property from injury; that it was necessary to do this as many of the crowd were bent on violence and impeding the police; that the imposition of the cordon was not due to policing failures; and that those who were not demonstrators or who were seriously affected by being confined were allowed to leave.

They also held that the applicant, although not violent herself, knew in advance that many of the demonstrators intended to cause violence and that the police were concerned about this '“ a rather unwelcome implication being that if you know anyone on a demo who might use violence, you then get what you deserve.

But Bishopsgate did not fit that bill. Instead of considering what was necessary '“ far less what was right'“ the police bust their way in, armed to the teeth and febrile with hostility. And because they can now kettle, they did '“ despite the fact that no one in the crowd was heaving paving stones at them, as they did at May Day, and that the worst that would happen to them might be a dodgy organic flapjack.

Less flippantly, the only hopeful thing about the whole shabby business was the behaviour of the kettled crowd '“ a line of them stood with their arms raised, saying quietly: 'This is not a riot,' some of them chanted: 'Shame on you' at the raised batons and clenched fists, and the rest got on with just being there.

Balaclavas at the ready

But the police behaviour was nothing short of terrifying. It was not just because of the sight of masked men, sweating out cortisol under their visors, but seeing the reinforcements outside the cordons preparing for their war. On go the plastic Velcro-held shoulder pads, the modern cuirasses and cuisses and the ridged elbow protectors. Then the all-in-one padded suits and the balaclavas to hide their identities go on and off come the shoulder numbers... and out goes all idea of a decent contract between police and public.

Here is a fantasy to end with: imagine that they had let Climate Camp carry on overnight and that instead of beating them away with batons and trampling their frail tents, they had taken off the dehumanizing macho riot kit, even talked to the protestors, perhaps joined in a meeting or two, brought in some extra loos for them, appreciated their communal decision to be non violent, even done a deal with the organisers that they had an orderly retreat at an agreed time and took their rubbish with them '“ would that not be facilitating their right to peaceful protest and be a template for policing in a modern democratic society?

None of that should be a fantasy but a demand, made by all of us, made soon and made in earnest '“ before the bad old days look tolerant by comparison with how we live now.