Does Britain have a two-tier policing system? Accusations that some protesters are treated differently to others have emerged in the wake of this week’s riots and the various counter-protests that have taken place. But while the blame is being directed at Sir Keir Starmer – with Elon Musk tweeting about ‘two-tier Keir’ – questions over the police’s handling of protests must not solely be directed at Britain’s current Prime Minister. Since 2020, I’ve harboured an uncomfortable feeling about the way protests are dealt with – and a sense that something is wrong.
The policing of protests holds up a mirror to society
That year, as lockdown elided into rafts of complex restrictions, I was a fly-on-the-wall at various demonstrations in London, where I was helping feed the homeless. What I saw troubled me deeply.
Central London during the pandemic was surreal. Only two groups of people populated the empty streets: police inhabiting red vans; and hundreds of homeless people. Most had been given hotel accommodation as part of the Covid response but, with day centres shut and many staff from the big homeless charities working from home, all their usual support networks had gone. Volunteers for Under One Sky, a homeless charity, distributed hot meals cooked in a Covent Garden restaurant, receiving jokes and gratitude in return.
Then the Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests began. Young people congregated in Trafalgar Square, up and down Whitehall, outside No. 10 and around parliament. The atmosphere was festive; some sat drinking from cans, and the air was laced with cannabis. It was basically a street party with the police looking placidly on.
I didn’t have a problem with the festive protestors. I felt sorry for those who’d been confined at an age when the need to socialise is visceral and was glad they were enjoying themselves. What did bother me was the blatant contradiction between the government’s edicts to the general population and the exception apparently being made on ideological grounds. As the summer wore on, I decided to attend an anti-lockdown protest to see if the policing style was different.
I’m something of a connoisseur of protests; as a travel writer, I’ve observed demonstrations around the world. I rarely participate, seeing them as a way of getting anthropological insight into a country, a bellwether of national mood and the relationship between people and authority. I’ve witnessed feminist protests in Spain and Portugal, anti-government rage in Albania and the first demonstrations against the totalitarian regime in Syria.
The policing of the anti-lockdown demonstration in September 2020 was so different from that of the BLM protests that it might have well have taken place in another country.
The protestors, predominantly working-class folk feeling the impact of government restrictions, appeared to be largely peaceful. But the atmosphere was tense and the demeanour of the police antagonistic. A nice couple from Surrey explained to me why officers formed lines and then rushed at sections of the crowd; it was a tactic to clear the area.
Later, I watched a lone woman courageously articulating her right to protest as a line of heavily-equipped policemen advanced on her in a way clearly designed to intimidate. They threatened me with arrest for simply taking a photo.
Is it possible that a shift took place in 2020
I left Trafalgar Square seeing my country with new eyes. What I’d witnessed contrasted sharply with the policing of protests embodying the principles of British policing by consent. These required officers to provide ‘absolutely impartial service…without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws’. I’d seen officers smile on carnivalesque protestors during Donald Trump’s 2019 visit and then protectively encircle a small group of counter-protestors being reviled by members of the public. That was impartiality in action.
Is it possible that a shift took place in 2020 when police acquired unprecedented powers during the pandemic? The contrasting policing styles I observed brought to mind events I had witnessed in the Middle East. Syria’s regime tolerated protests about Palestine because they expressed state-approved Arabist sentiments, but had a very different attitude towards gatherings critical of government. The huge military presence at the one I observed sent ordinary Syrians the message: ‘We rule. You submit’.
British policing, by contrast, has traditionally been rooted in egalitarian democratic values, expressed in the formulation ‘the police are the public and the public are the police’. This differs sharply from the model in continental countries where the police operate as a paramilitary force. As an Italian friend told me: ‘In Italy, when you see a policeman, you expect trouble’. Two-tier policing goes hand in hand with an overbearing attitude towards the public. It’s a sign loyalties lie elsewhere, with government, ideology or popular trends.
Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley’s response to a question about two-tier policing. Attitudes to journalists are an indicator of attitudes to the wider public; the commissioner’s manhandling of a reporter’s microphone was a world away from the courteous engagement of the two Met commissioners I interviewed in the early 2000s. Dismissive and aggressive, Rowley’s actions recall the crude political culture that prevails in Albania where the prime minister, faced by students protesting impossible conditions, just called them names.
This week’s riots have been a depressing spectacle. But it’s good that an open discussion about double standards in policing is finally taking place. Back in 2020, I went to that lockdown protest in secret – its policing style reflected a wider double standard that was playing out in society. I remain convinced that the policing of protests holds up a mirror to a society. Let’s take a good look at what we see in it.
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