Looting

The criminal morons who caused this trouble have let down an entire younger generation by playing into the hands of the establishment they pretend to so detest.

Because far from paving the way for more freedom and anarchy, they have created the conditions for this country to take a severe lurch to the right.

Before you know it, we could be one step away from being a police state.

Okay, maybe I exaggerate, but the backlash to the civil unrest, in terms of sentencing from the courts, has been severe and the authorities are shaping up to crack down hard on any repeat.

That all sounds well and good, and anyone who argues against tough Government/penal action is now going to be condemned as a hand-wringer.

The problem is that the powers-that-be now have a perfect excuse to stifle everything else they don’t like – and that may be very bad news for me or for you at some point in the future.

This country has a proud tradition of democratic civil protests. But, in my experience, when the public revolts, the Government normally finds it revolting and would love to stop it in its tracks.

I remember the poll tax ‘riots’ in 1990 because I went on one of the protest marches around that time. In brief, most of the normal tax-paying law-abiding population was appalled that every citizen was soon going to be slapped with an enormous unsustainable levy just for being alive.

I couldn’t afford to pay it and I marched with lots of other middle class citizens to the town hall of my hometown of Maidenhead. We were very polite, and many of the protesters were elderly or wheelchair-bound.

However, the normal idiots got involved and hijacked the protests, especially in London, where there were violent confrontations, arrests, injury and mayhem.

Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher publicly condemned these protests, but even though she was right to hit out at the troublemakers, I remember being furious with her. It appeared as if we were all being tarred with the same dreadful brush and she just seemed so out of touch with the mood of the nation.

Ultimately, however, this protest did actually work because some say it led to Thatcher’s downfall as PM later that year, and her successor John Major immediately scrapped the hated tax.

I am in no way condoning violent demonstrations, far from it, but there is a place for legitimate street protests.

In contrast, rioters of two weeks ago were not protesting about anything but were mainly just greedy stupid opportunists, as we can see from those already convicted in the courts.

This was not about economic hardship, or the frustrations of deprived youth; it was trouble for trouble’s sake.

But what it means is the next time there is a genuine reason to protest, then it’s going to be all the more harder for those who wish to take to the streets. The authorities will have an easy excuse to snuff it all out as quickly as possible.

Ultimately, the right of the common man to cry foul against his lord and masters will suffer because no one in power will ever want to take any more chances with letting the great unwashed protest in their masses.

The great irony of this episode is that the people power, a.k.a rioting and looting, is likely to increase the power of the state. And we will all be the poorer for it.