Nothing changes. The problems the MPS are experiencing now are the same as in the 1990's. Any of the accusations made then about lack of impartiality are being made now. I don't see much hope for the future. Both XLW and XRW will play the victim card and everyone will hate the old bill.
Saturday could be interesting with it being an international break for the football and all the lads being at a loss for something to do.
I resigned from the met 2 months ago after 15 years and am glad I'm not complicit. I'm appalled at what I've seen the last 6 Saturdays. Nothing to do with freedom to protest and everything to do with intimidation. It is an anti-british march and to me is what a Nazi brownshirt rally may have been like in 1930's germany. Last week was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht which has passed most people by. Do British Jews now feel like German Jews did? Here, in Britain in the 21st century? A senior Hamas chief living openly in Hendon, with counter terrorism Policing informed in 2020. Political wing proscribed around the same time. Policing has been two tier just as for the BLM disorder, a Rotherham 2.0.
Nothing petrify's the met more then a charge of racism. Met bans an israeli hostage solidarity march through golders green. Happy to wade into a Sarah Everard vigil for the crime of... COVID breaches. Happy to police mean tweets for anything relating to trans issues. I believe met has completely undermined its own policing principles and so their own authority and legitimacy. If met were seen to be doing their job instead of standing by squirming while mobs chanting for the extinction of Israel, there simply would not have been any counter protests this weekend. When these white protesters 'far right'(?) came out, met suddenly remembered how to police, kitted up, batons drawn, 100 plus arrests. Of course 1,000 cops cannot police a crowd of 100,000 and I understand the concept of 'winning by appearing to lose' in public order policing. I've been there, policing JSO slow walks and seeing the look of disgust from the public so not intended to criticise the rank and file. An officer will be served gross misconduct papers for arresting someone for fare evasion these days! I am an Afghan veteran and former SO15 borders officer. I perceive in media, much talk and prominence of XRW, as if somehow equivalent and counter balancing to Islamic extremism. Attacks and the data do not support this. I believe the Met has lost a large section of law abiding majority over this and much else in the last 5 years.
Society evolves. The Police have not. We're deluding ourselves thinking the Police wield real influence as to how society behaves. The Government/Courts decide what tools the Police have and how they should be used. You want me to mend your boiler? Why have you just given me a hammer then?
An example... The Police should take action against those on the march, who by their words or actions demonstrate Anti-Semitism. Let's brief on Anti-Semitism.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition (adopted as a 'working definition' by the governments of more than 32 countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany and Canada)
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” 11 examples are provided.
Heavy pushback however that the IHRA definition risked conflating legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with Anti-Semitism. The UK Labour party tied itself in knots over whether they should adopt the definition. The situation in UK universities was particularly strained. University College London's academic board declined to adopt it, saying that the IHRA definition could have “potentially deleterious effects on free speech, such as instigating a culture of fear or self-silencing on teaching or research or classroom discussion of contentious topics”. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson made the UK Government's position clear when in 2020 he said, the higher education regulator for England could be asked to take regulatory action including suspending “funding streams” if British universities failed to adopt the IHRA definition by the end of December.
There... sorted. Oh hang on, still a bit of confusion as to whether criticism of the Government of Israel is inherently Anti-Semitic, particularly with regard to Zionism and the 'Palestine situation'. In 2019, the IHRA definition’s lead author, Kenneth Stern, said it “was never intended to be a campus hate speech code” and complained that right wing Jewish groups had weaponized it in the US, thanks to President Trump including 'the definition' in an executive order amending the Civil Rights Act. Cases were being brought which attempted to criminalise speakers, assigned texts and protests, said to violate the definition.
Thought experiment... if we draw up a similar definition regarding racism against black people, should we say that criticism of affirmative action programs is inherently racist? Would that strike you as an attempt to suppress legitimate discussion? That's how the IHRA definition is being used, and this shit show is why we can look at the same incident and argue as to whether there's been Anti-Semitism.
Police shouldn't try to negotiate/interpret the political. It doesn't lend itself to decisive action. Those 'yes but', 'bigger picture' and 'what will 'community groups' say?', Senior Officers have got us to the situation we are in today... We have a simple job, where are the boundaries, enforce the boundaries. Our collective experience and knowledge should be directed entirely to the practical aspects of enforcement, not the political. Don't pick and choose which causes/views have enforcement, there must be equality of outcome, so a supporter of BLM or EDF taking the same actions face the same outcome. We arrest, the courts tell us if we've got it right.
Some might say 'but we avoided an outbreak of disorder'... well whoop y-do to you. Avoiding a negative outcome is easy, look at France's capitulation in WW2. Avoiding a negative is not a positive. Officers on the sharp end are not served well, legitimate protesters see extremists tainting their message, Anti-Semites are emboldened and the general public see an ineffective Police Service. That is not a battle lost in order to win the war, that is just another battle lost.
Having equated senior officers to the Vichy government, I might as well finish with an apposite quote from a Marxist.
He who fights, can lose. He who doesn’t fight, has already lost. – Bertolt Brecht
Except the government proscribes Hamas - many of the offences I'm talking about have nothing to do with the IHRA definitions at all. They are to do with publicly supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation. No blurred boundaries there. And we can't even do that properly.
Yes, I'm with you, it should be easy. But 'blurred boundaries' are not just semantics, they're a political tool to deflect criticism and obfuscate meaning. Where are all the prosecutions for 'from the river to the sea!' and 'Jihad!, Jihad!'? Not offences, or no appetite to enforce?
Very well written but find myself at odds with some of the content.
If it’s down to the police to battle extremism & maintain social cohesion - alone the police will fail. A myriad of government & local organisations are also responsible for this. The police really are the antithesis of ‘tip of the spear’ on that one. Agree with half of point 4 but not with point 5. 2000 cops to police & deal with offences on a march of 100,000 plus? (I never believe organiser’s numbers). It takes a PSU good at crowd entry tactics to get a target as you know. 18 for one. And dependent on the offence arrested for - you won’t always get an 18.
Post incident arrests are usually more controlled & once in a subject’s domicile, there is better chance of garnering additional intelligence.
And if you ban it by saying no - you will have to have double the resources and not just on the streets. They will still turn out. More intel staff, crime, custody handling; the works. Whilst none of us dinosaurs are against such a response, these days it means more mutual aid (at costly rates) & the penny pinchers don’t like that.
Can’t process? Okay the organisers will hold assemblies along the entire planned route - focusing numbers on key targets.
It usually presents more problems than it solves.
Intelligence. My bugbear. Sorry to say it but I’ve sat in planning meetings where the threat assessment provided by ‘15 is clearly rehashed from a previous event with a sprinkling of open source information. If they were lucky enough, the command team to be would be honoured by a 15 rep, who sometimes let’s say let their side down through their non verbal communication; they clearly didn’t want to be there, as they would have to be working that event at the weekend.
As I’ve said before the demise of the Public Order Intelligence Unit after Millbank led to a dearth of intelligence going forward. Agreed it wasn’t perfect but it did poke & prod the bigger intelligence beast when needed. MO2 have gotten better over time as they realised if they weren’t providing the services everyone needed & not just for public order; they too would face more personnel cuts than they had already.
As an aside, I wonder if the FLA & other RW/XRW gents protecting cenotaph know just how much closer they are on the RW axis to Hezbollah, Hamas, HuT, AQ, ISIS? And as for Corbyn & the left...
I'm glad you threw in a challenge there; it helps me think. A few observations. (1) SO15 are to public order intelligence what RyanAir for luxury air travel. It was set up as the executive action wing of the Security Service under a very specific set of circumstances, and it now shows. They were warned and they ignored the warnings out of hubris. (2) You are, like most police officers, a pragmatist. We tend to look at public order like a plumber looks at an ageing boiler. This is as it should be. What fascinates me is that point where law and politics meet and turn into crime. This is the point where plumbers need to think about a bit more than plumbing. (3) If the police don't take the tip of the spear on this, nobody else will. They will, however, blame the police when things go wrong. (4) I've read accounts and diaries of police chiefs in 1930s Berlin, citing the awfulness of the NSDAP and Communist Party running around and the impossibility of policing it all. Some of their observations chimed with yours. Look how that turned out. (5) Yes, Hamas are nazis. The majority of the football dross aren't even clever enough to articulate an ideological position.
There are many ways to skin the intelligence cat. As for protesting against Israel, fine. That doesn't mean the plentiful evidence of rabidly antisemitic material wasn't displayed (it unambiguously was). And, therefore, if you stand with those who support terrorism and accept their company - what does that make someone? A useful idiot? A sympathiser by default? If you went to a demo say, against the EU, and every time you went it was full of far-right skinheads wouldn't you eventually draw the conclusion you were laying with dogs?
This is why Jewish people are wary of the 'yes but' lines trotted out at every protest involving Israel.
And this is the issue. There *was* widespread and blatant anti-semitic and pro-Hamas chanting and placards. The sort that simply wouldn't be tolerated were they attacking any of the other identity politics hobby horses favoured by the new puritans. And the police did virtually nothing.
I wasn't there, but I did what I'm sure the average Met online investigator does (disclaimer - I was one) and spent a couple of hours looking at open-source evidence across social media. Even my casual tour of imagery revealed a wealth of incriminating material. As for the poster depicting Biden as a Jewish-possessed Satan covertly controlling the world, a classically virulent antisemitic trope since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion... that was why you used to have an SB officer who knew such things in GT! I know you aren't a fan, but still.
Nothing changes. The problems the MPS are experiencing now are the same as in the 1990's. Any of the accusations made then about lack of impartiality are being made now. I don't see much hope for the future. Both XLW and XRW will play the victim card and everyone will hate the old bill.
Saturday could be interesting with it being an international break for the football and all the lads being at a loss for something to do.
Sorry! tidied up and reposted
I resigned from the met 2 months ago after 15 years and am glad I'm not complicit. I'm appalled at what I've seen the last 6 Saturdays. Nothing to do with freedom to protest and everything to do with intimidation. It is an anti-british march and to me is what a Nazi brownshirt rally may have been like in 1930's germany. Last week was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht which has passed most people by. Do British Jews now feel like German Jews did? Here, in Britain in the 21st century? A senior Hamas chief living openly in Hendon, with counter terrorism Policing informed in 2020. Political wing proscribed around the same time. Policing has been two tier just as for the BLM disorder, a Rotherham 2.0.
Nothing petrify's the met more then a charge of racism. Met bans an israeli hostage solidarity march through golders green. Happy to wade into a Sarah Everard vigil for the crime of... COVID breaches. Happy to police mean tweets for anything relating to trans issues. I believe met has completely undermined its own policing principles and so their own authority and legitimacy. If met were seen to be doing their job instead of standing by squirming while mobs chanting for the extinction of Israel, there simply would not have been any counter protests this weekend. When these white protesters 'far right'(?) came out, met suddenly remembered how to police, kitted up, batons drawn, 100 plus arrests. Of course 1,000 cops cannot police a crowd of 100,000 and I understand the concept of 'winning by appearing to lose' in public order policing. I've been there, policing JSO slow walks and seeing the look of disgust from the public so not intended to criticise the rank and file. An officer will be served gross misconduct papers for arresting someone for fare evasion these days! I am an Afghan veteran and former SO15 borders officer. I perceive in media, much talk and prominence of XRW, as if somehow equivalent and counter balancing to Islamic extremism. Attacks and the data do not support this. I believe the Met has lost a large section of law abiding majority over this and much else in the last 5 years.
I recall the new CC of PSNI once bellowing,"we dont need SB the cold war is over." Complete fool then. Complete tool now.
Not a particularly pleasant man, was he?
Top 3 of all time nasties
Society evolves. The Police have not. We're deluding ourselves thinking the Police wield real influence as to how society behaves. The Government/Courts decide what tools the Police have and how they should be used. You want me to mend your boiler? Why have you just given me a hammer then?
An example... The Police should take action against those on the march, who by their words or actions demonstrate Anti-Semitism. Let's brief on Anti-Semitism.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition (adopted as a 'working definition' by the governments of more than 32 countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany and Canada)
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” 11 examples are provided.
Heavy pushback however that the IHRA definition risked conflating legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with Anti-Semitism. The UK Labour party tied itself in knots over whether they should adopt the definition. The situation in UK universities was particularly strained. University College London's academic board declined to adopt it, saying that the IHRA definition could have “potentially deleterious effects on free speech, such as instigating a culture of fear or self-silencing on teaching or research or classroom discussion of contentious topics”. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson made the UK Government's position clear when in 2020 he said, the higher education regulator for England could be asked to take regulatory action including suspending “funding streams” if British universities failed to adopt the IHRA definition by the end of December.
There... sorted. Oh hang on, still a bit of confusion as to whether criticism of the Government of Israel is inherently Anti-Semitic, particularly with regard to Zionism and the 'Palestine situation'. In 2019, the IHRA definition’s lead author, Kenneth Stern, said it “was never intended to be a campus hate speech code” and complained that right wing Jewish groups had weaponized it in the US, thanks to President Trump including 'the definition' in an executive order amending the Civil Rights Act. Cases were being brought which attempted to criminalise speakers, assigned texts and protests, said to violate the definition.
Thought experiment... if we draw up a similar definition regarding racism against black people, should we say that criticism of affirmative action programs is inherently racist? Would that strike you as an attempt to suppress legitimate discussion? That's how the IHRA definition is being used, and this shit show is why we can look at the same incident and argue as to whether there's been Anti-Semitism.
Police shouldn't try to negotiate/interpret the political. It doesn't lend itself to decisive action. Those 'yes but', 'bigger picture' and 'what will 'community groups' say?', Senior Officers have got us to the situation we are in today... We have a simple job, where are the boundaries, enforce the boundaries. Our collective experience and knowledge should be directed entirely to the practical aspects of enforcement, not the political. Don't pick and choose which causes/views have enforcement, there must be equality of outcome, so a supporter of BLM or EDF taking the same actions face the same outcome. We arrest, the courts tell us if we've got it right.
Some might say 'but we avoided an outbreak of disorder'... well whoop y-do to you. Avoiding a negative outcome is easy, look at France's capitulation in WW2. Avoiding a negative is not a positive. Officers on the sharp end are not served well, legitimate protesters see extremists tainting their message, Anti-Semites are emboldened and the general public see an ineffective Police Service. That is not a battle lost in order to win the war, that is just another battle lost.
Having equated senior officers to the Vichy government, I might as well finish with an apposite quote from a Marxist.
He who fights, can lose. He who doesn’t fight, has already lost. – Bertolt Brecht
Except the government proscribes Hamas - many of the offences I'm talking about have nothing to do with the IHRA definitions at all. They are to do with publicly supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation. No blurred boundaries there. And we can't even do that properly.
Yes, I'm with you, it should be easy. But 'blurred boundaries' are not just semantics, they're a political tool to deflect criticism and obfuscate meaning. Where are all the prosecutions for 'from the river to the sea!' and 'Jihad!, Jihad!'? Not offences, or no appetite to enforce?
Very well written but find myself at odds with some of the content.
If it’s down to the police to battle extremism & maintain social cohesion - alone the police will fail. A myriad of government & local organisations are also responsible for this. The police really are the antithesis of ‘tip of the spear’ on that one. Agree with half of point 4 but not with point 5. 2000 cops to police & deal with offences on a march of 100,000 plus? (I never believe organiser’s numbers). It takes a PSU good at crowd entry tactics to get a target as you know. 18 for one. And dependent on the offence arrested for - you won’t always get an 18.
Post incident arrests are usually more controlled & once in a subject’s domicile, there is better chance of garnering additional intelligence.
And if you ban it by saying no - you will have to have double the resources and not just on the streets. They will still turn out. More intel staff, crime, custody handling; the works. Whilst none of us dinosaurs are against such a response, these days it means more mutual aid (at costly rates) & the penny pinchers don’t like that.
Can’t process? Okay the organisers will hold assemblies along the entire planned route - focusing numbers on key targets.
It usually presents more problems than it solves.
Intelligence. My bugbear. Sorry to say it but I’ve sat in planning meetings where the threat assessment provided by ‘15 is clearly rehashed from a previous event with a sprinkling of open source information. If they were lucky enough, the command team to be would be honoured by a 15 rep, who sometimes let’s say let their side down through their non verbal communication; they clearly didn’t want to be there, as they would have to be working that event at the weekend.
As I’ve said before the demise of the Public Order Intelligence Unit after Millbank led to a dearth of intelligence going forward. Agreed it wasn’t perfect but it did poke & prod the bigger intelligence beast when needed. MO2 have gotten better over time as they realised if they weren’t providing the services everyone needed & not just for public order; they too would face more personnel cuts than they had already.
As an aside, I wonder if the FLA & other RW/XRW gents protecting cenotaph know just how much closer they are on the RW axis to Hezbollah, Hamas, HuT, AQ, ISIS? And as for Corbyn & the left...
I'm glad you threw in a challenge there; it helps me think. A few observations. (1) SO15 are to public order intelligence what RyanAir for luxury air travel. It was set up as the executive action wing of the Security Service under a very specific set of circumstances, and it now shows. They were warned and they ignored the warnings out of hubris. (2) You are, like most police officers, a pragmatist. We tend to look at public order like a plumber looks at an ageing boiler. This is as it should be. What fascinates me is that point where law and politics meet and turn into crime. This is the point where plumbers need to think about a bit more than plumbing. (3) If the police don't take the tip of the spear on this, nobody else will. They will, however, blame the police when things go wrong. (4) I've read accounts and diaries of police chiefs in 1930s Berlin, citing the awfulness of the NSDAP and Communist Party running around and the impossibility of policing it all. Some of their observations chimed with yours. Look how that turned out. (5) Yes, Hamas are nazis. The majority of the football dross aren't even clever enough to articulate an ideological position.
Keep 'em coming, MJ, always a pleasure mate.
Hopefully, never a chore.
Thank you. I agree 100%.
There are many ways to skin the intelligence cat. As for protesting against Israel, fine. That doesn't mean the plentiful evidence of rabidly antisemitic material wasn't displayed (it unambiguously was). And, therefore, if you stand with those who support terrorism and accept their company - what does that make someone? A useful idiot? A sympathiser by default? If you went to a demo say, against the EU, and every time you went it was full of far-right skinheads wouldn't you eventually draw the conclusion you were laying with dogs?
This is why Jewish people are wary of the 'yes but' lines trotted out at every protest involving Israel.
And this is the issue. There *was* widespread and blatant anti-semitic and pro-Hamas chanting and placards. The sort that simply wouldn't be tolerated were they attacking any of the other identity politics hobby horses favoured by the new puritans. And the police did virtually nothing.
I wasn't there, but I did what I'm sure the average Met online investigator does (disclaimer - I was one) and spent a couple of hours looking at open-source evidence across social media. Even my casual tour of imagery revealed a wealth of incriminating material. As for the poster depicting Biden as a Jewish-possessed Satan covertly controlling the world, a classically virulent antisemitic trope since the Protocols of the Elders of Zion... that was why you used to have an SB officer who knew such things in GT! I know you aren't a fan, but still.