Skateboarding Plod? No, send in the riot squad
WHEN the protesters reached Parliament Square, the police were ready for them. Officers in full riot gear drew their truncheons and started cracking heads. Demonstrators with blood running down their faces were dragged away in handcuffs. Metal barriers were erected to stop anyone leaving the area and causing trouble elsewhere.
Police were determined to prevent even a peaceful sit-down protest blocking the roads and disrupting traffic.
As the crowd surged forward, cops in visored helmets, and wielding riot shields, drove them back with extreme prejudice. One eye-witness said: ‘It was like watching beaters driving birds towards guns at a rural grouse shoot.’
The events I’ve just described relate not to the mayhem caused by the global warming mob over the past few days, but to the handling of a march organised by the Countryside Alliance a few years ago.
When 400,000 people from Middle England came to town to demonstrate against Labour’s ban on fox-hunting and neglect of rural communities, they were met with zero tolerance. Simon Harrap, Master of the Hampshire Hunt, said: ‘It was incredibly heavy-handed. There was no problem at all, then the next thing I knew a policeman hit me over the head with his truncheon.’
TV footage showed terrified men, women and children, in Barbour jackets, green wellies and flat caps, cowering before the police assault. It was as if the Waffen SS had been sent in to break up the village fete in Midsomer Murders.
Admittedly, elements of the crowd threw bottles and other projectiles, but whether that was retaliation or provocation is still disputed to this day. We’re talking organic chickens and freerange eggs here. What’s not in dispute is the fact that 99.99 per cent of the marchers behaved impeccably, even picking up litter along the way. They left London tidier than they found it.
But despite widespread criticism, the Met considered the police’s response that day to be proportionate, a text-book operation. Now where have we heard that recently?
Compare and contrast the brutal suppression of the countryside march with the softly, softly treatment of the eco-nutters this week.
Our capital city has been plunged into chaos and millions of ordinary folk have been inconvenienced by a small fraction of the numbers of people who took part in the countryside march.
Yet they have been indulged and, indeed, encouraged by Left- wing politicians — including, naturally, the Labour leader O.J. Corbyn and London’s ludicrous Mayor, that publicity-hungry, two-bob spiv Sadiq Khan.
I don’t need to detail the chaos these lunatics have caused, shutting bridges, disrupting public transport and costing shops and small businesses a small fortune, at a time they can ill afford it.
NOR
do I need to reemphasise the futility of their spoilt antics and the fact that by causing widespread traffic jams they’re actually creating the very pollution they hope to prevent.
I did that the last time they brought London to a standstill, in November. As I wrote then, the right to protest is an essential freedom in a civilised society. The right to make the lives of your fellow citizens a misery is not.
Like most of these demos, disruption is not an unfortunate side - effect, it’s the whole point. They’re not intended to achieve anything other than to draw attention to those taking part. Look at me, Mum, I’m on Sky News!
These clowns don’t seriously believe the Government is going to turn round and say: ‘You’re dead right, you know. We’re going to ban cars and close down all the power stations tomorrow.’
(Although, come to think of it, given the endemic insanity at
Westminster these days, you can never rule anything out — however bonkers.)
No, what’s really worrying about this is the truly pathetic response of the Metropolitan Police. Until now, the blessed Cressida, Dick of Dock Green, has enjoyed an extended honeymoon for a number of reasons — one, she’s the first woman in charge of the Yard, and, two, she’s not her hapless predecessor Bernard Hyphen-Howe.
But she has to take full responsibility for the police’s shameful dereliction of duty this week.
It’s bad enough that London is suffering from an unprecedented epidemic of knife crime, for which Theresa May, who scrapped stopandsearch when she was Home Secretary (too ‘nasty’ probably) must shoulder her fair share of the blame.
Dick needs to be reminded forcibly that the Met exists to serve the whole population, not pander to the foibles of noisy protest groups and other ‘vulnerable minorities’.
What on earth did she think she was doing, ordering her officers simply to stand back and let the demonstrators wreak havoc? As I write, there’s still a ridiculous pink sailing boat bolted down in the middle of Oxford Circus, one of London’s busiest interchanges.
For days, the Old Bill have just stood around gawping at it, chatting away cheerfully to the gormless birds doing yoga, and serving ozone- friendly vegan burgers, or whatever.
How one yearns for the days when another bunch of social warriors protesting about — Tory cuts? Climate change? Globalisation? Doesn’t really matter — were ‘kettled’ by my old mate, the late Mike Todd, a proper copper and ruthlessly effective Assistant Commissioner at the Yard.
The kettling referred to the way in which the demonstrators were surrounded and cooped up for hours in Oxford Circus, without food or water. If they wanted to leave to use the toilet, they weren’t allowed back.
Similar tactics were employed against Stop The City anarchists. Faced with police intransigence, most of the demonstrators eventually gave up and went home.
Heaven knows what Mike Todd would have made of those officers filmed skateboarding and disco dancing with the protesters. I’m only surprised they weren’t singing: ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!’
Stuff like this makes my annual Mind How You Go Awards, handed out for prime examples of police stupidity, virtually redundant.
I don’t know whether to file the skateboarding Plod under Mind How You Go or You Couldn’t Make It Up.
THESE
days the only time the police are likely to use a kettle is to make the demonstrators a nice cup of tea.
Today, we’re told the organisers are planning to target Heathrow Airport. They’ll probably get a police escort along the M4 and then, once safely glued to the main runway, the cops will send out for food and drink to stop the poor lambs getting hungry or dehydrated.
Think I’m kidding? That’s exactly what the Met did when the same bunch of eco-maniacs chained themselves to the runway at London City Airport.
One of the demo organisers is a madwoman who says she got into
protesting after taking hallucinogenic drugs — still a criminal offence, last time anyone looked.
But probably not any more in the eyes of the police. It was revealed recently that some forces — sorry,
services — now operate a ‘test not arrest’ policy when it comes to drugs, so that users can be reassured that what they’re taking won’t kill them.
(See earlier paragraph ‘I don’t know whether to file . . .’ etc.)
The police apparently are free to pick and choose which laws they enforce. Funny how this new-found tolerance doesn’t extend to motorists doing 82mph on a deserted motorway at 2am, or stopping for 30 seconds on a double yellow. Or to anyone suspected of committing a ‘hate crime’ on Twitter.
Still, at the rate things are going, no one will ever get out of first gear. Or their own driveway.
Tomorrow morning, if you find an eco-warrior chained to your garage door, you’ll probably find a Plod, too, making sure you don’t infringe said protester’s yuman rites by driving over him/her.
As Robert Hardman wrote yesterday, our once great nation has been turned into an international laughing stock. We pretty much knew that already, so it was inevitable that the Old Bill would want to get in on the act, too.
On second thoughts, forget about Mind How You Go and You Couldn’t Make It Up.
This whole, shameful fiasco has to be filed under Makes You Proud To Be British.
The police seem free to pick and choose which laws to enforce