Starmer blamed the police for Clapham. Why is he silent about Bristol?
Bristol: Monday March 22, 2021.
The word that all police officers, and all members of their families, dread is “riot”. Nothing is more terrifying than the violence that can be unleashed when a mass of humanity turns on the thin blue line of men and women whose duty is to enforce the law. Those who have never been in a riot cannot imagine the panic, madness and rage which can spread like wildfire through a previously placid march or assembly. A crowd turns into a mob.
A riot is what happened on Sunday in Bristol. At least two officers suffered broken bones and several more were less seriously injured when a supposedly peaceful rotest ended in a full-scale attack on police vehicles, many of which were sprayed with graffiti or rocked and two of which were set on fire. Criminal damage was also caused in the city centre.
Riots are never justifiable in any circumstances, but the Bristol riot was especially heinous because it appears to have been deliberately incited. A gathering in the name of the freedom to protest peacefully, objecting to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, seems to have been hijacked by anti-police extremists. The organisers are not, however, entirely innocent. They had promoted the protest under the recklessly ambiguous title of “Kill the Bill”. What was this, if not an invitation to those who sought any opportunity to assault the police, including hurling missiles and fireworks?
The Labour Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, is among those who have condemned unequivocally the behaviour of the rioters. Rightly, he pointed out that such lawless violence “will be used as evidence and promote need for the Bill”. Rees knows that ordinary Bristolians expect nothing less than outright denunciation of ugly scenes that disfigure their city and damage its reputation. Any decent mayor would back his police force. Rees did so.
Yet Labour’s national leadership have been noticeably slower to distance themselves from the Bristol riot than they were to condemn the police for their conduct at the Sarah Everard vigil on Clapham Common. Just over a week ago, a bucket of ordure was poured over the Metropolitan Police for their “heavy-handed” dispersal of a peaceful but illegal gathering. Sir Keir Starmer declared that he was “disturbed” by police conduct: “This was not the way to police this protest,” he said — in effect a vote of no confidence in the Metropolitan Commissioner. What does it do to morale in the force when a minor scuffle, with a handful of arrests for public order offences, become the excuse to end the career of the most senior police chief in the land?
There are legitimate concerns about some aspects of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, especially the new powers that it gives the authorities to police protests. In particular, the Bill creates a new offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”. This is aimed at the tactics used by radical organisations such as Extinction Rebellion or Black Lives Matter to draw attention to their cause, regardless of any disruption that may result from a protest. The occupation of public spaces for days or weeks on end, for example, prevents others from going about their lawful business. Admirable ends — highlighting racial discrimination, say, or protecting women from violence — do not justify any and every means.
The Bill is framed by its opponents as a restriction on the right to protest; what it actually does is to give the police more discretion in policing such protests. Whether you support it or not depends, to a large extent, on whether you trust the police. Some of those who proclaim the right to protest most loudly are the same people who want to restrict freedom of speech. Both rights are precious, but neither is absolute. Like all rights, freedom of speech and the freedom to protest depend upon the rule of law. Those who set out to turn demonstrations into riots do not defend human rights, but the inhumanity of anarchy.
Riots threaten everyone. To be silent denotes complicity. At the time of writing, there has been silence about the Bristol riot from Sir Keir Starmer, a former Director of Public Prosecutions. His silence speaks volumes. Labour opposes the Bill in the House of Commons. That is the job of the Opposition. But turning a blind eye to riots suggests that the party thinks any means are justified to achieve the end of defeating the Bill.
In reality, of course, appearing to condone violence against the police will achieve the opposite. Public opinion was not on the side of the politicians — Conservative as well as Labour — who lined up to condemn the police for their handling of the Clapham Common vigil. Only a minority thought that Dame Cressida Dick should resign, or indeed had done anything wrong. By and large, the public supports the present ban on large gatherings during lockdown. People are desperate to return to a semblance of normality; they have limited tolerance for those who disregard social distancing. And when they see protests get out of hand, the great majority are inclined to give police the benefit of the doubt.
Most protests against the Bill have been law-abiding, but even when permitted by the authorities, such gatherings still imply a degree of indifference to public health. And when something goes wrong, as it often does when mass hysteria takes over, the same politicians who have passed strict measures that they expect to be enforced, take the easy option of blaming the police. Those at the sharp end are caught in the cross-fire.
On Sunday, many thousands of people across the country exercised their right to protest. Many millions chose to watch Line of Duty instead. That, too, was a kind of protest — a protest in support of the police.
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