The mass of new video evidence piling up on the G20 protests raises some very searching questions which cannot be brushed aside on the usual grounds that the police have a difficult task, demonstrators can get aggressive, and in a crisis the police must always be supported. Over 185 video recordings show (1) riot police charging protesters who have raised their arms in the air exclaiming ‘this is not a riot’, (2) riot police shoving people back inside the ‘kettle’ by striking people on the head with riot shields, (3) police bearing the badges of medics striking people with batons, (4) uniformed officers accompanied by plainclothes officers armed with batons, (5) police with their numbers concealed and a police inspector from Bishopsgate who refuses to identify himself when asked, (6) riot police officers grabbing a woman from behind and throwing her violently to the ground, as happened also to Iam Tomlinson, (7) a police inspector who tells the media to leave the area or face arrest, (8) a woman hit in the face by a back-handed blow from a police officer and then batoned hard on the back of her legs, and (9) a police handler who lets his dog bite the arm of a man who has just turned away. This is not simply maintaining law and order. It is provocative, aggressive, take-’em-on policing, and it immediately raises the question: is this form of policing out of control, or if not, who is controlling it?

There have always been considerable ambiguities about the system of control. A division has always been made between issues of strategy and operational matters, the latter being for the police alone. But there is a grey area between the two where it is not necessarily clear into which category certain policing activities may fall. There is also the tension in supervisory responsibilities between the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London to whom the Government, perhaps rather unwisely, gave the chairmanship of the Metropolitan Police Authority. Then there is the role of the IPCC (the Independent Police Complaints Commission) whose members are all chosen in effect by the Home Office and which is generally seen as siding too readily with the police. After the G20 protests the IPCC initially decided not to carry out any independent investigation into Ian Tomlinson’s death, accepting the police account that he died of a heart attack for reasons unrelated to the demonstration. They also contended there was no video evidence when they had made no attempt to seek it, and when the City of London has almost certainly more CCTV coverage than any other place in Britain.
Most important of all of course is the relationship between the Home Office and the police. Given New Labour’s authoritarian attitude towards civil liberties, it is hardly surprising that the police got the message that environmental and social justice protesters were fair game, especially if clustered near bankers in the City of London. It is a mindset that has led to the pre-emptive arrest of 114 environmental campaigners in case they were thinking of staging a protest at a coal station in Nottinghamshire, and now, so it is reported, the planting of dozens of paid informants in the ranks of environmental groups as though they were violent terrorists.
What is needed is the democratisation of policing in this country, based on a fully consulting, evidence-taking Commission of Inquiry whose membership and terms of reference have to be ratified by Parliament. There needs to be agreement on the manner of policing large demonstrations, the terms of engagement (e.g. in particular is ‘kettling’ either acceptable or necessary?), the degree of force permitted and the precise situations in which alone it can be used, the recorded monitoring of crowd control, a much more robust and proactive IPCC (with stronger terms of reference and a new membership reporting to Parliament, not the Home Office), and more assertive Police Authorities (especially in London) who are wholly independent of the political process. Above all, we need a Home Office which recognises that peaceful protest is a democratic right that should be cherished, not a threat to the State that should be smashed.

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