When I first wrote about the 114 people arrested at the Iona School in Sneinton on 13 April, I suggested that the police had been heavy handed and that the arrests could only be justified in some type of ‘Minority Report’ future-crime scenario.
Six-weeks later, the Nottingham Evening Post reports that not only has the operation possibly cost £700,000 of taxpayers’ money but that none of the people arrested has yet been charged with any offence.
Death knell for legitimate protest?
As usual, the police and the Government are being tight-lipped about how effective and how expensive this operation was. In response to a parliamentary question from Alan Simpson, MP for Nottingham South, about both the cost of the operation and the charges so far brought (or not…), Vernon Coaker, Minister of State for Policing, Crime and Security (and MP for Gedling), said: “I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. The costs relating to a police operation is a matter for the chief officer of the force concerned.”
He went on to say: “The police have a duty to facilitate peaceful protest, but balanced against this is their duty to prevent the commission of offences.”
From this and other recent events, it’s not hard to see what they focus most of their efforts on though, is it?
The Evening Post asked Notts Police for a full breakdown of the cost of Operation Aeroscope. This included the cost of officer overtime, as the arrests of the alleged climate change protestors was on a Bank Holiday Monday, the cost of holding the alleged protestors in custody and the cost of vehicles and equipment used by officers involved.
The force said they were not in a position to disclose the information. The Post has now submitted a formal request to the force under the Freedom of Information Act, which suggests that they think that the Nottinghamshire police won’t disclose the information rather than being unable to. I wonder why?
There is also now a rumour that a member of the Iona School staff was called to the premises by the police before the operation began and that he had keys to the building. He could therefore have facilitated their entry to the school and adjacent premises without the need to batter down internal and external doors and cause extensive damage. But that wouldn’t have been half as much fun for the boys in blue would it?
What bothers me most about this incident, is that it seems to be another demonstration of the establishment paranoia over terrorism (of the Islamic fundamentalist, environmentalist or any other kind), which started with the God-forsaken alliance of Bush and Blair after the World Trade Centre tragedy and which now seems to leak daily into the national consciousness and allows the security forces carte blanche to take whatever measures they deem appropriate to ‘protect us’.
Of course, we want the police to protect us… but not by wasting our taxes and trampling all over our legitimate rights and freedoms.
English Defence League target Nottingham
News that the English Defence League will hold a demonstration in Nottingham on 5th December is very disturbing.
Whilst their website is at pains to point out that they are not a ‘far-right or fascist’ organisation and neither are they racist, it is reasonable to ask who is behind this group and what their ultimate aims are, given that similar protests in other towns have ended in violence.
The protest in Luton that gave birth to the EDL (thisislondon.co.uk)
If their raison d’etre is, as they say, to: “awaken our sleeping Government to face up to and deal with the Jihad in our country, which threatens the very foundations of the freedoms won so dearly for us by past generations”, you could be forgiven for thinking that staging public demonstrations in the knowledge that these will bring a predictable (and dangerous) response from anti-fascist, far-left and anti-racist groups as well as muslim organisations (both militant and moderate) is not the best way to go about their campaign of supposedly working towards peaceful change.
Their use of symbols and institutions such as the St George’s flag, various military images and even Christmas (incidentally, a Christian not an English celebration), some of which have been misappropriated and distorted by other groups not unlike their own (especially football hooligans, which the EDL has been linked to), does nothing to support their credentials as a ‘non-fascist’ organisation. And on the English Defence League’s youth website, there seems to be some confusion over whether their job is to defend England (or English?) or the whole of Great Britain from Muslim extremists .
But what I find most unsettling about their ‘mission’ is the central theme of blind conviction to support of the British armed forces, clearly seeing this as everyone’s patriotic duty and suggesting that any questioning of their role abroad (especially if you are a Muslim) is something that shouldn’t be allowed (or should, at best, be discouraged).
The EDL was apparently born in June when soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment returned from Iraq and a small but very vocal Muslim group called them ‘butchers’ and ‘child killers’. I was as disgusted as anyone by the language used by these people and would in no way support the way they went about their protest. But, let’s examine the facts. Since Bush and Blair took us into this illegal war in 2003, 130 British servicemen have been killed in Iraq. In the same period, over 46,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, many by the actions of coalition forces.
So, perhaps it is unfair to call British soldiers murderers and child killers but, if a foreign army had invaded the UK and 46,000 civilians had been killed as a result, I’m sure the EDL would be first in line to condemn this as outrageous, criminal and unacceptable.
I think we are danger now of more and more factional conflict in this country as people gravitate towards single issue groups that appeal to some sort of twisted sense of national identity and patriotism and which offer a potential defence against the myth of Muslim extremists taking over Britain and destroying all that we hold dear.
The politicians (Bush and Blair especially) are to blame for this atmosphere of impending doom and paranoia and it is now up to them – and those of us who understand the danger posed by organisations like the EDL and similar extremist groups of whatever religious or political persuasion – to act decisively to prevent further damage to many of our already fragile communities.