No excuse for violence

PEOPLE will decide for themselves whether the right to protest should trump the need to observe social distancing during the battle against Covid-19 but the violence against the police at a Black Lives Matter rally was totally unacceptable.

No one is pretending there is not racism in Britain, which we must continue to work to eradicate, but this is not America and our police, who have been among front-line workers protecting us from the pandemic, are not the ones in the dock for the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

For the most part the weekend’s protests were admirably peaceful but, for a small minority of idiots, it was a predictable chance to indulge in violence against authority.