Police are now our rulers
THE behaviour of the police towards Green protesters on the M25 tells us a great deal about the revolution which has overtaken this country.
Long ago, the difference between law-governed Britain and centralised France was explained to me: If a group of protesters sat down on the road in Dover, the local police would arrest them for obstruction and move them. If a similar group did the same thing in Calais, the Gendarmes would first check what their political aim was, then contact Paris for instructions. If they were the right sort of protester, they would be left alone. If they were the wrong sort, they would be attacked with clubs and kicks, and chucked into the cells.
Now, although we still technically have local police in this country, they have all been politicised, and trained to know which way the national wind is blowing. Whatever your own opinions may be, it has been growing clearer for several years that some types of protester are now treated more gently than others. The police themselves long ago ceased to be what we thought they were. They are largely uninterested in us or in crime, and have become – as Parliament 200 years ago feared they would – our masters rather than our servants. Robert Peel managed to overcome those fears by ensuring that police had limited powers, were unarmed and wore modest unmilitary uniforms. In just 50 years of liberal-Left control, all that has gone.
For a while they pretended to be what they had once been, still wearing the old helmets and tunics. But now they have a swaggering, arrogant look to them, in clompy boots, combat trousers and baseball caps, hung with clubs, manacles and gas sprays.
Yet the tough face is seldom turned towards those we want kept under control, such as burglars, vandals or street louts. It is turned towards us.
It is four decades since the big trade unions were identified as overmighty subjects, and the Thatcher government resolved to cut them down to size. I think the time has come for the Government to take on the police, before they get completely out of control. Ministers should start by retiring that figurehead of modern policing, Dame Cressida Dick.