The Trouble With Kettles

Today, Britain's Independent Police Complaints Commission handed it's file on the death of Ian Tomlinson, who died after being struck by a police officer at the London G20 summit protests in April, to prosecutors. Mr Tomlinson's only offence was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, hence, caught in the Metropolitan Police's "kettle".

"Kettling" is a police tactic which consists of penning a crowd into a confined space, usually a square or road intersection, supposedly to prevent anticipated disorder. Once penned, the crowd are kept corralled for hours at a time, with no access to food, water or sanitation. This can take place in either rain or hot sun, and the protesters may include children and the elderly. After being held for hours, the dispirited and disgruntled protesters are then allowed to disperse, being photographed or videoed as they go.

No charges or arrests result, other than in a tiny minority of cases. The people concerned would have been treated better if they had actually been arrested, as they would then have been guaranteed rights to access food, water, sanitation and shelter. Our legal principles seem to have been turned on their heads; it is now "guilty until proved innocent". These tactics, it may be presumed, are designed to discourage legitimate protest.

What is even worse, though, is that the penned masses may include many people who, like Mr Tomlinson, have nothing whatsoever to do with the protest, and were just attempting to go about their day to day routine. The G20 "kettle" included many such people, including a consultant surgeon from a local hospital on his way to work, who was not allowed to leave, despite producing his ID and asking the police to speak to the hospital on his phone.

Many will be familiar with the internet footage of Mr Tomlinson trying to go about his lawful business, returning home from his newsagents business, and being pushed back into the "kettle" by a policeman in riot gear. The fall, or the blow to his chest, is thought to have triggered a fatal heart attack. The police undoubtedly need to take action to ensure that protests pass off peacefully, with minimal disruption to other citizens, but such action should always be the minimum necessary, and should not infringe the rights of either lawful protesters or bystanders. It is totally unacceptable when it results in the death of an innocent man.

The tactic of "kettling" is a profound overreaction and denies the basic human rights of those caught up in it. Far from ensuring public order, it causes a profound sense of injustice, and actually incites normally peaceable people to disorder. As one observer wittily put it, "the problem with kettles is they tend to boil."

Indeed, the footage of this protest actually shows police officers standing by as a pair of protesters attacked a branch of a bank, even though it could easily have been stopped by the officers present. The only individuals trying to stop the attack were some of the other protesters. So much for public order!

This episode has further undermined the declining confidence of many in our police. It is symptomatic of a malaise within parts of that service; a tendency to view the general public as the enemy - we are all potential, even probable, offenders.

There has been a steady erosion of our rights as citizens in Britain over the last few decades. Ironically, much of the worst of this has occurred under a Labour government. We are subject to ever greater surveillance, either physical or electronic (no doubt including subversive blogs!), and our freedoms of assembly, movement and expression have been whittled away. These are issues which should concern us all. The argument that "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" is deeply flawed, not least due to the incompetent collection and handling of data by government agencies. Now even our local councils have the right to spy on us, and are doing so, often abusively.

I don't believe that we are close to living in a police state in Britain, but I do think that we have allowed our government to make significant steps in that direction. With the increased surveillance of the general public by police, other agencies and CCTV, the proliferation of databases, extended detention without charge, increasing police powers, restriction of rights to free expression and protest, restriction orders and a culture shift away from presumption of innocence and civil rights, our freedoms as citizens are restricted and threatened as in no other western society.

The argument has often been made that if Jesus of Nazereth was to appear today he would be locked up as a lunatic. In today's Britain, he would probably be put under surveillance, jailed or placed under a restriction order.

To paraphrase Pastor Niemuller "first they came for the Jews and I said nothing, because I wasn't a Jew....when they came for me, no one was left to speak for me." Quakers have had a long tradition of speaking out against oppression, and in favour of rights, wherever injustice occurs, and to whomever. Undoubtedly, many are already speaking out, but we need to do more. We need to actively make the argument for expanding and guaranteeing civil rights. If we believe in "that of God" in everyone (or however we choose to phrase it) and we believe in living our testimonies in our lives, then I think we are obliged to do so.