Liberal elites are out of touch on disorder

Effective policing has never been more important in the face of a rise in bullying protests

Iwas cycling along Regent Street with a friend when we ran into a Black Lives Matter demonstration. A young blonde woman in yellow dungarees blocked our way.

My friend asked politely if she could move. “I’m protesting,” the young woman reproved in a nice, middle-class accent, as if waving a placard was a sacred calling. She advanced aggressively on us. My friend looked aghast. “You are on a Black Lives Matter march and you want me, a black man, to move out of your way? You’re a piece of work, you are!” Pouting, she let us pass.

Thanks to my friend I did not feel intimidated. But it might have been a different matter at the Kentucky Derby in the US last weekend. I could have come up against the Not F------ Around Coalition – its members in masks, combat gear, bullet-proof vests and carrying semi-auto rifles. In some parts of America, something approaching civil war appears to be breaking out between protesters on both sides of the divide. Footage on social media of burnt-out cities, looted businesses and armed militia might just deliver Donald Trump a surprise win in the presidential election later this year.

The liberal media, both in this country and the United States, dismiss Trump’s attempts to make this an election on law and order. But they are mainly insulated from the issue. They live in leafy suburbs with safe streets. They know little of the consequences of crime because they are far less likely to experience it.

Crime and violence falls disproportionately on the poorest in society. In the UK, those on incomes below £10,000 are twice as likely to suffer violence with injury and three times as likely to be robbed or raped as those on incomes above £50,000. It is also more likely to affect some ethnic minority groups. So Trump had a point when he said before a recent visit to Wisconsin: “If you look at the black community, they want the police to help them stop crime.

The Hispanic community, they want police. They don’t want crime. They don’t want to be mugged. They don’t want to have any problems, and it’s just a shame.”

But law and order remains an issue of deep concern to the majority of voters across all of society. People want to feel safe and to know that the laws of their country are being applied fairly. The rule of law is precious and we play around with it at our peril. Many migrants I have interviewed as part of my research picked out our orderliness as the single biggest draw for coming to this country. They craved a life without constant tension and intimidation – a state of affairs we take for granted in the UK.

At least we did. In recent months, we have seen protests, however laudable the original aims, disrupt lives and bring the police into disrepute. Sit on a park bench during lockdown and the police threaten arrest. Take part in a Million People March and they join you in a dance. This one rule for the law-abiding and another for demonstrators is divisive and undermines the sense of justice that binds society together.

Priti Patel thinks a new law might do the trick. I have no time for the hard-left who appear to have hijacked Extinction Rebellion. But her plan to label them an “organised crime group”, and to jail protesters for five years is not the answer. The Home Secretary’s job is to enforce the laws we have already and get the police to do the same. It is about setting the police a clear agenda and putting some backbone into them. Cajoling protesters to “co-operate” as if they are recalcitrant teenagers is hardly police work.

Under existing laws, the police enjoy the powers to arrest even the girl trying to intimidate my friend on Regent Street. Obstructing the Queen’s highway is an offence under the 1980 Highways Act. Instead, police helicopters flew above a protest of fewer than 100 people with a lot of noise, no doubt at great expense, but very little effect – rather like the police in general at the moment.

We’re in a muddle here but we shouldn’t be. This is about the basic upholding of the structures of society. It is about being fair, and not letting spoilt, middle-class girls in yellow dungarees dictate to the rest of us.

Now that would be a vote winner, both here and in the United States.

Harriet Sergeant is a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies