Why is it a bad thing to protest against the British government’s legally, morally and scientifically dubious decision to put almost the entire country under house arrest?
And why is it an acceptable thing to gather in a large, menacing crowd outside Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official residence in Downing Street, chanting ‘Fuck the police’?
These are questions I’d very much like to hear answered both by the head of the Metropolitan Police Cressida Dick and also by her ultimate boss, Home Secretary Priti Patel.
A couple of weekends ago, you’ll remember, I got threatened by a policeman with a fine, and with arrest, simply for the crime of attending a small, peaceful, anti-lockdown protest in London’s Hyde Park. The police came in mob handed: there were almost as many coppers as there were protestors. There were also a number of arrests for offences as trivial as holding a banner. The same happened again this weekend, with peaceful protestors loaded into police vans at Hyde Park’s Speaker’s Corner.
Yesterday, a group of hard-left agitators claiming to represent Black Lives Matter, some of them waving Antifa flags, have gathered in central London for a much more questionable cause. Sure, they’re pretending to be righteously upset about the death of George Floyd – but this is a pretty pathetic excuse, given that obviously the British government is not remotely responsible for the actions of the Minneapolis police department. In reality, this is the usual hard-left suspects doing their damnedest to destabilise UK democracy at a time when it is already being heavily frayed by the ongoing lockdown. Yet the police appear to be doing almost nothing to stop them.
What kind of message do we think this sends out to the nation?
Something like: “If you want to complain about dubious government policy which is destroying millions of jobs, thousands of businesses, stealing people’s freedoms and condemning thousands of people to unnecessary deaths from everything from suicide to untreated illnesses then the might of the law will be unleashed to crush and silence you. But if you want to overthrow democracy, just go right ahead.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel needs to get a grip. Metropolitan Police boss Cressida Dick needs reminding that her job is to protect the innocent, not encourage leftist anarchism.