Indeed. The ‘narrative’ is cunningly blending, as if there is no distinction, political demonstrations and full-scale rioting. They say:

“we were accused of being heavy-handed in the past, but recent events show we have to be far more ‘robust”. In other words, they want carte-blanche to act as if there’s a full-scale riot in the offing, even when there is not.

So, expect the police to be cracking heads next time a demonstration is organised, and laying on all the police-state sh*t they generally do with peaceful protest.

Well if by “legitamate political protest” you mean Trashing shops, Offices & The HQ of Rival Parties then yes I hope the Police will be more “Robust”.

Most people dont see Violence as a Legitamate tool of Politics, the fact that so many in “The Labour Movement” do simply demonstrates your irrelevance.

The #UKriots should not be used to clamp down on political protest

Has anyone actually suggested that they should be though?

Lots of people have said that violence needs to be curbed, but I cannot recall hearing a single politician suggest that the right to political protest should be curbed.

Quite the opposite in fact – they have gone out of their way to say that political protests must be preserved.

Maybe you can cite a politician calling for a clamp down on political protests?

Posting to Liberal Conspiracy often amounts to political protest.

Sometimes, from the order of events, issues in posts made here are taken up in the mainstream media. Whether that is by coincidence or not, it’s difficult to say.

“There is little doubt that the growing income-inequality gap in the UK will fuel protests in the future.”

Yikes that’s a bit specific for LC…!

Directly citing income-inequality as a cause of civil breakdown.

Are you sure you don’t mean inequality of wealth, or inequality of opportunity?

Usually best to just play safe and stick to general inequality.

It’s unfair to call this #UKriots when no riots happened in Scotland or Wales.

Social media might enable riots but it also supples evidence which can be used as evidence against rioters. Incitement can largely be tracked back to the source, Facebook and Twitter messages are a signed confession, and videos uploaded to YouTube are more incriminating than CCTV.

Social media often help innocent families and friends who would otherwise be seperated by rioters reassure each other about their safety or call for help when the emergency services are busy.

Clamping down is a bloody apalling suggestion and puts us on par with Iran and Egypt.”

I’m hoping the government won’t be closing down the social netwoking websites at the start of the next riot as the networks will be needed to call out the Neighbourhood Action Groups (NAGs):

When the rioters came to attack the premises of Kurdish and Turkish businesses in Hackney’s Stoke Newington High Street and Kingsland Road on Monday night, the owners were waiting for them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/london-riots-fighting-neighbourhoods

Of course, the government can better manage this prospect by reconstituting the Home Guard to train and prepare for next time.

The #UKriots should not be used to clamp down on political protest

Indeed they should not. What would be good though would be if the left could get their own house in order and tell those posing tossers in black who started smashing bank windows at the G20 to piss off as it wrecks the protests. And also take a good hard look at this form of political protest that led to the Tottenham riots.
”Who killed Smiley Culture?” they demand. Implying that the police did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJJAndpl4R0

You only have to watch the ”police, camera, action” TV shows these days to see that so many people resist arrest. It’s almost routine. The police are forced to physically subdue people all the time. Sometimes people die, and if they are black, it gets put down as a racist murder by the police. Notice in that youtube above, the ridiculous Jody McIntyre, who made a fool of himself by urging people on twitter to ”rise up and beat the feds” during monday’s rioting

Same with gun carrying Mark Duggan. He got killed because he carried a gun. The Clash even had a song about it before he was born. ”The Guns of Brixton”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqcizZebcaU

I was always a Clash fan, but listening to this again, it’s actualy a lot of crap.
It glamourises that ghetto lifestyle and the idea that the police are the big bad oppressors. It’s wallowing in it.

“Once these habits become orthodox, it will be a small-step for the government to begin terming protests as ‘riots’ – especially when a small minority of violent agitators sabotage a protest.”

Indeed, I believe many right wingers already see quite a number of peaceful protest activities as tantamount to “riots”.

If the proposal to remove all benefits from ‘rioters’ goes ahead, participating in peaceful protest could become very dangerous indeed (especially but not only if currently dependent on benefits), because of the risk a bunch of nutters might turn up and give the government an excuse to classify it as a riot.

IanVisits: “Maybe you can cite a politician calling for a clamp down on political protests?”

No-one ever calls for a clampdown on political protests. They just create the powers required for the police to do it, while claiming to be clamping down on something else, in this case riots. Nearly all anti-protest legislation in recent years has been contained in the various new Terrorism laws.

“Once these habits become orthodox, it will be a small-step for the government to begin terming protests as ‘riots’ – especially when a small minority of violent agitators sabotage a protest.”

Well, the police have already defined anarchism as if it were illegal in itself.

@2,

that’s what’s called self-refutation.

Is that essential liberty the right to take and destroy the property of others?
Franklin’s political thought was based around the rights of private property. You should eb ashamed

@ Edmund Burke,

Get a grip, man ffs. The point being made, at least by me and I think others, is that there is a difference between political demonstrations and riots, and the former should not be treated like the latter, and that the ‘robust’ rhetoric at the moment doesn’t auger well for the next time people want to peacefully demonstrate.

Both you and Paul Barking @2 are accusing us of not seeing the difference between these two, which I for one can do. I am certainly not saying that it is legitimate political protest to torch and loot.

It looks like David Cameron has taken us down the same path as Syria !

This way he can slowly crush the rest of our civil rights

#2: The Reichstag fire in 1933 Germany probably only required for better anti-terorism laws and harsher sentencing for arson. The complete banning of communist/socialist political parties and groups and suspension of civil liberties went a bit far. But my point is, any knee-jerk removal of civil liberties in response to an event is unwelcome and sets a precedence which can be abused later:

Or to put it another way:

Put a frog into a pan of boiling water and it’ll jump straight out. Put the frog into a cold pan of water then slowly heat it up and the frog’ll boil to death. Basically the model used for establishing most dictatorships in history.

“It looks like David Cameron has taken us down the same path as Syria !”

C’mon. The Police didn’t deploy snipers during the riots to shoot looters or randomly at anyone out on the streets.

Bob B at 18

I would not hold your breath, if I were you.

@19 Mr Grunt: “I would not hold your breath, if I were you.”

I take your sentiment. But I suspect more investment will first go into “face recognition software”, better resolution CCTV imaging (compare the often miserable quality of standard CCTV images with the high resolution of Google street images) and intelligence gathering.

Not long ago we had debates here about covert police infiltration of environmental activist groups.

I’m impressed with the reported speed of the arrest and charging of someone for the arson attack on Reeves Corner, Croydon:

“Police investigating the large fire at Reeves Furniture store have arrested a man. The 21 year-old was arrested by detectives from Operation Withern and is being held at a south London police station.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8692463/London-riots-in-ashes-a-firm-that-survived-two-world-wars.html

There are an awful lot of CCTV cameras around Croydon and Reeves Corner is a busy traffic junction.

When the Mail gets critical about Police use of firearms – as it did with the case of Mark Saunders – we can be pretty sure that there are still unresolved public sentiments about the issue. I doubt the effectievness of water canon in dealing with rioting and looting but rubber bullets would likely come into use well before roof-top snipers with high velocity weapons.

@20. Bob B: “But I suspect more investment will first go into “face recognition software””

That is called pissing away money.

Stuff your cheeks full of peanuts, change your specs, flatten or project your ears, use latex to change the shape of nose/ears, wear different contact lenses, wear cosmetics that fool cameras.

Never trust technology salespeople.

@21: “That is called pissing away money”

I don’t agree although there is doubtless scope for conning officials and for duff kit – compare the notorious £s billions failure of the NHS national database of personal medical records and the choose ‘n’ book system for arranging medical appointments.

I’ve spoken with work colleagues who have seen demos of face-recognition. Did you ever wonder why they had those high counters at the passport control points on some EU borders in the 1970s and 1980s when the German authorities were trying to catch members of the Baarder-Meinhof gang?

The official would take a passport, open it at the traveller’s photo, turn it upside-down and then it would disappear from sight. I think that they were scanning the photos for recognition.

“Never trust technology salespeople”

I’ve been making an online issue of badly managed government computer projects for years – and not just government projects:

City in 275m pounds computer fiasco: Stock Exchange chief resigns after Taurus shares system is scrapped, threatening 1,000 jobs [March 1993]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/city-in-275m-pounds-computer-fiasco-stock-exchange-chief-resigns-after-taurus-shares-system-is-scrapped-threatening-1000-jobs-1497069.html.

My son works in the computer industry.

@ 15 Trooper Thompson

“Both you and Paul Barking @2 are accusing us of not seeing the difference between these two, which I for one can do.”

I think he and Paul Barking either didn’t bother even skim-reading the article before they posted, or are deliberately ignoring its content so they can argue with, shall we say, a man of a straw-ish disposition?