The wheels of justice have, for once, turned with decent haste and Andrew Banks is now banged up. Banks’s crime? To relieve himself at Saturday’s demonstration just inches away from the memorial of PC Keith Palmer, who was murdered trying to prevent an Islamist terrorist gain access to Parliament in 2017. The contrast between supreme sacrifice and supreme idiocy can hardly be greater. My reaction, like those of many others was repulsion at what looked like a disgusting act of desecration.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told that Banks had consumed 16 pints, hadn’t slept, didn’t notice PC Palmer’s memorial and was in London to ‘defend statues’ but he couldn’t say which ones. As a composite of many of those involved in the disorder and violence of last Saturday that led to 113 arrests, this is a decent proxy. Witless, drunken incivility calls to young men like Andrew Banks every weekend in the year. It was his dumb luck to be photographed on this one looking like he was doing the very thing he had been lured to London to stand up against.
But does the punishment fit the crime? More importantly, does it help restore the reputation of police and state after two weekends of destruction and vandalism that left dozens of officers injured, the majority in the violence that attended the earlier Black Lives Matter protests?
The decision by authorities – it’s not entirely clear who yet – to board up the statue of Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph following the disgraceful acts of vandalism of 7 June gifted the far right with a grievance narrative that resulted in Andrew Banks vain search for a public toilet.
It was a wholly predictable strategic mistake that the Met’s senior management must take responsibility for. The argument that covering these iconic monuments was a prudent response to stop further vandalism had the reverse effect. It merely granted a collection of far-right agitators, football hooligans and fellow-travelling imbeciles like Banks the perfect excuse for a day trip to make trouble.
The perception was easily mobilised – the police ran away from BLM protestors last weekend, they allowed desecration of Churchill and the Cenotaph to take place under their noses and rather than stand their ground, they’ve surrendered to a mob by boarding ‘our’ statues up. ‘If they can’t do it, we will’ was an easy rallying call that scooped up many outraged law-abiding veterans as well. The contrast – replete with ironies – with Australian police ringing an unclad statue of Captain Cook to protect it didn’t help things either.
The apparent impotence of our police to protect monuments of immense emotional significance to our national consciousness resulted in a propaganda victory for the far right and a distraction from the legitimate concerns of thousands of our citizens outraged at the death of George Floyd and demanding change here. It has also meant that the hapless, hopeless Banks is now detained in one of our Covid-compromised prisons where he will have a week of virtual solitary confinement to reflect on his stupidity and the colossal offence and distress he has caused. Our prison system is a petri dish for many things, but redemption is currently not one of them.
Personally, I’d be happier if this idiot was sentenced to two weeks working with a police charity, such as the excellent Care of Police Survivors (COPS). He might also benefit from a structured encounter with the family of PC Palmer (if they’d have him) to understand the grotesque hurt he has caused. Developing some much-needed empathy would be a far better investment than the £700 of taxpayers money he’ll cost, about the amount he should in fact have been fined.
The same should hold for the appalling individual who tried to set fire to our flag on the Cenotaph and who needs to be found and punished with just as much alacrity as Banks. Two weeks in one of our unstable, feral penal dustbins or a fortnight meeting veteran of all creeds and colours and doing unpaid work for a related charity? Beyond punishment, which would be the more transformative?
There is, it needs to be said, an important distinction of intent here that will make the difference. Banks, off his face, was literally oblivious to his offence, no such defence for someone trying to burn the national flag on its national war memorial. But what stops a recurrence is more valuable to society than what punishes the transgression. The two are not much related as our appalling recidivism rates show.
There’s no question in my view that those who physically assaulted our police over both weekends should receive exemplary custodial sentences. The exploitation of peaceful assembly and protest by extremists is intolerable and they need to understand that clearly. But for people like Andrew Banks and the flag burner who do violence to symbols, wittingly or not, we need justice to be imaginative as well as swift. As the events since George Floyd’s death have shown, where there is change, there is hope.
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