Yesterday evening, the government instituted a little-known procedure called the Additional Courts Protocol. Set up following the 2011 London riots, this involves emergency ad hoc magistrates’ courts sitting 24 hours a day to deal swiftly with the troublemakers.
This was the right decision. But it still may come back to bite the people who made it.
It’s not difficult to see the advantages. Quick justice, bypassing the usual bureaucracy and reducing the scope for suggestions that witnesses’ memory may have faded, may well give offenders a salutary shock: the prospect of it can concentrate minds in future.
It also must be admitted that in the present case, invoking the Protocol has big upsides for a government whose senior ministers’ reaction has so far been seen as pretty wooden. Stock phrases condemning violence and supporting the police, and announcements about a national disorder taskforce, don’t cut much ice with voters.
So for the moment, the government has gained credit for its proposal to administer a short sharp shock to a bunch of thugs. It hopes to tamp down the simmering social tensions we associate with muggy August weekends. But it still remains vulnerable.
For one thing, it will have to take care that the justice meted out over the next few days is not only swift but even-handed. There is disturbing footage on social media that suggests yesterday’s violence was not limited to white thugs, and that supporters of other groups, were seen swaggering about with illegal weapons in their hands. If the perception remains that the white working class is being singled out for conviction and sentence in short order, while others are left unpunished, the results could be ugly.
Secondly, if in future the government faces calls for further use of the Additional Courts Protocol, it will have to tread carefully. It is difficult to justify not using it more frequently if it is as effective as we are now being asked to think. The government will also have to be very careful if it is to avoid charges of selectivity. There have, for example, been plenty of allegations of intimidation of Jews at Palestinian marches. In future, why should it not be seen as being just as important to nip anti-Semitic thuggery in the bud as violent manifestations of Islamophobia? Or take events in Leicester in September 2022, when there were serious and violent sectarian clashes between Hindus and Muslims with hatred on show every bit as vituperative and ugly as that which we saw yesterday. If they were to be repeated, the case for swift justice would be every bit as strong: but would it be answered by a Labour party desperate not to antagonise the ethnic vote? One hopes so: but we can’t be sure.
There should be arrangements for swift justice as a matter of course without fear or favour whenever serious unrest occurred. Unfortunately whether we will see this from the present government, and whether chief constables and the bureaucrats at the Crown Prosecution Service, who both have to sign off on such exercises, would do so, is perhaps doubtful. For the moment all we can do it wait, see and hope.
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