Quote:
Originally Posted by tw
In earlier days, soldiers would fire live ammunition at demonstrators only because they were aggressively demonstrating. Such lack of restraint created Kent State, the legacy of Martin McGuinness, Brighton hotel bombing, and massive violence in Northern Ireland.
What you witnessed; was that a legacy of attitudes back then? Did authority attitudes (in UK) towards violent and unrestrained enforcement change significantly since then? Was that an example of less violence by authorities? Have better techniques been deployed to avert the resulting violence and aggression? Your impression?
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That's a good question. I don;t know what the full answer to that would be. I think the police are a lot less inclined towards that kind of violence now.
The police force has had to do a lot of learning in the last 20 or so years. To their credit I think for the most part there has been a fairly profound attitude and culture shift at all levels
The Poll Tax demo is not the only example of police effectively turning a heated situation into an explosively violent one. It was one of the later ones - there were a few other occasions where the same thing happened - the anti-nazi demonstration against the election of the first BNP local councillor in 1992 was one - I was also at that and that was seriously scary shit.* The police used the kettling technique again and that also turned into a major riot through the streets of London.
The police response both to the situation itself, and the resultant press coverage and reporting of the incident, was often problematic - the way the police acted and then covered up the true story whilst blaming the victims of the Hillsborough disaster followed a similar pattern.
To me, the two demos in London represent an older type of police response - more in line with the way they responded to the striking miners in the 80s.
Often during times when the police have been heavy-handed and violent towards demonstrators, and things have escalated to a pitched battle, the police at the centre of the violence are reported by witnesses to have no number showing on their collar. It has been suggested by some (some credible, others less credible) that the government of the day brought soldiers in, in police uniform.
I don't know about that.
To see how the police have changed in such matters, you only really have to look at how they responded to the rioters in several cities a few years ago - kettling was not employed, they did everything they could to try to diffuse the situation rather than inflame it.
* at the anti-nazi demo I saw both the worst and best of policing.
Tensions were high - this wasn't a jolly carnival like the poll tax demo had started out, rather it was a somber affair. And many of the people on that demo had experienced heavy handed police tactics before, in previous demos. The police employed similar tactics, the whole thing kicked off into an almighty fuck up.
Imagine this: police with body armour, helmets and riot shields in front of you - lines of police with dogs on either side. Then the shout goes up, they've split the crowd - you've been boxed in and the police with shields and batons are starting to move slowly forward.
But - I also remember trying to get back to the coach park, me and J and a bunch of others - there were still lots of people running about, some were rioting and looting and there were fights between this group of skinheads and that group of anti-fascist activists and now it's getting dark - our little group of about 9 or 10 slightly traumatised protestors were trying to traverse an area where things were being thrown - like bottles and bricks. And a truly lovely police officer (with number on collar and clearly an ordinary local cop) led us at a crouch, behind cars, away from the random brick fight, and then got us safely to the coach park.