London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

All protests are not equal in the eyes of the UK's police

All protests are not equal in the eyes of the UK's police

Until the BLM protests in early June, we were told that even tiny gatherings of people would put lives in danger. For that reason we all spent months isolated. Then BLM started their protests and the country watched as well as waited. If the warnings had been right then BLM would have caused a spike in the virus. But so far as I know, no such spike occurred. Or if it did, it was too politically dangerous to discuss.
I’ve never been a great fan of public demonstrations. When I was at university, one of the great causes du jour involved a bus company owned by a man accused of not much liking the gays. My generation were short on causes, so intermittently there would be a call for direct action against the bigoted buses. I slipped along once, not sure whether I really wanted to join in.

Apart from the sight of a few dozen callow students preventing one of the guilty buses from progressing up the High Street, my main memory is the almost animalistic rage of a number of the bus’s passengers. Unable to be heard above the chants, they looked like flies in a bottle, getting ever more furious about being made to be late for their next appointments. I sloped away, reflecting that if I had been on that bus I would not have felt much more supportive of the cause after the protest than I had before.

It is a little noted consequence of public protest: the inconvenience you put other people to. Naturally, everybody in principle defends the right to peaceful protest. But whenever I have found myself on the side of the inconvenienced, it turns me subtly or otherwise against the cause at hand. The recent behaviour of Extinction Rebellion protestors offers one powerful example.

Outside of a small group of misanthropes, most of us would like to save the planet. But few people were happy for their morning commute to be made even more miserable than it already was by people claiming to feel more strongly about the issue than they did. Likewise, some years back I learned that the thing that had caused me to spend an afternoon sitting in traffic was a ‘Pride’ protest. I don’t mind admitting that, stuck in a sweltering car, I thought things that would have shamed the Revd Ian Paisley.

In the era of Covid, you would have thought that protests would need an even greater reason than usual to justify going ahead. After all, the inconvenience factor is now accompanied, we are told, by a risk to the public health.

Until the BLM protests in early June, we were told that even tiny gatherings of people would put lives in danger. For that reason we all spent months isolated. Then BLM started their protests and the country watched as well as waited. If the warnings had been right then BLM would have caused a spike in the virus. But so far as I know, no such spike occurred. Or if it did, it was too politically dangerous to discuss.

What did spike was public contempt for the police — who all too readily ‘took the knee’ on the orders of the crowds only then to be pursued by mobs shouting things like ‘Run piggy, run’. At these protests the police appeared to be imploring the crowd to believe that they were on their side. That was understandable, given the -circumstances, but antithetical to good policing and confusing, given the claims about the virus that had been impressed upon us for months.

Then the XR protestors came back. And though the police did not this time skateboard or dance with them, they did once again take a remarkably benign attitude to their public congregating. Not to mention the group’s defacing of public and private property, their attempt to halt the distribution of national newspapers, and their blocking of various bridges in a capital that had already ground to a near halt.

In due course — and that day has now arrived — it started to look deeply selective, this enforcing of the law dependent on the lawbreaker’s motivations. For it is now clear that the police in Britain and other countries do not take the same benevolent attitude towards all protestors.

In Melbourne earlier this week, local police did a full mounted, armoured raid against people in the fruit and veg section of an outdoor marketplace. The stand-off occurred because the fruit stalls harboured protestors who were anti-lockdown.

Although police in Britain have not yet gone into full mounted--cavalry charge against anti-lockdown protestors, their stance towards such protestors in London last weekend was visibly more heavy-handed than anything they ever tried against XR or BLM. With the anti-lockdown protestors, all the devices of the law have come into use.

I am no great admirer of Piers Corbyn (though I prefer him to his brother), but the fact that he was the other week slapped with a £10,000 fine for organising an anti--lockdown protest did not seem just.

Or at least it could only be just if the heads of XR and BLM (and perhaps all the celebrities who egged them on) had been slapped with similar fines. Yet so far as I am aware, no such fines have been levelled, and so the police — and the law — begin to look as though they wield their powers against people with certain motivations but not against others.

At present, the authorities say that anybody organising mass public gatherings is putting everybody at risk and that their activities must be curtailed. You may agree with that line, though a growing number of people — including scientists — do not.

But what you cannot suggest is that mass opposition to the lockdown encourages the virus while mass gatherings in support of XR and BLM do not. Well, I suppose you can.

After all, we live in a country where last week we were meant to go to the office and this week we are meant to stay at home; where last month we were encouraged to go out and this month we are encouraged to stay in; where a principally nocturnal virus stalks the land, doing its worst in public houses after the hour of 10 p.m.

So you could suggest it. It looks as if in 2020 you could suggest anything, frankly.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×