Watching the brutality given out by the police at Dale Farm this morning made me ashamed to be British. But this excessive police force is not new. Increasingly the police are targeting protesters in order prevent normal people from having their voice heard or protecting their own homes.
Baton charges and taser are increasingly weapons of first choice for the police and not just in large protects like this. Almost every week we can read reports of pensioners or the disabled being tasered without any attempt by the police to use less injurious methods.
But it’s not just physical violence that the police are happy to use as a first option. The situation of Dale Farm is the second time this week that the police have used force to control people who are demonstrating against the system.
Over the weekend when Occupy took to the streets of London to call for a new way of politics and government - one not so tied in to the interests of the bankers and financiers - the police used excessive kettling methods to contain peaceful demonstrators. Not only that but the prevented other people access to the area that the demonstration took place to keep numbers down.
Had the police not prevented people from undertaking their right to peaceful protest then numbers could have been double than those that showed up.
Increasingly the police are not their to uphold the law but to enforce the interests of the systems and big business – brutally and with force if needed.
The G20 protest is an ideal example of this where police used aggressive and violent tactics – including driving police vans at high speed into peaceful demonstrator groups.
One of the principles that the police have forgotten about is that they police in Britain through consent. They don’t have the numbers or the equipment to police by force. But the police are losing the support of the public. And they need to get back to being independent of the politicians and big business and gaining the support of the public again. This is especially important as budget cuts take place and their numbers start to drop.
I’m 49 years old, 30 years ago when I saw a police officer need help I would have gone to help and support them. 30 years on and with my experience of police actions if I saw a police officer needing help I would stand and watch and smile before walking away. The police no longer have my support and that is becoming increasingly more common.
The police have a long hard task ahead of them if they want to get public support back and going around using tasers as a first option on people is not going to do that.
At my age I thought my days of peaceful protest and direct action was over, I did my time on the road protests. But when you see the way that Britain is fast heading towards a police state and the amount of vested interests that now control the politics of this country – in all three major parties – may be I need to reconsider whether to get off my backside again.
There’s a very good chance I’ll be on the Occupy protests this weekend because if the public don’t get out and protest about the direction that this country is heading then we can not really complain when the UK becomes a third world dictatorship where our lives are controlled by a violent and suppressive police force.
