What Has Happened to the British Police?

By Madeleine Kearns

Sunday, November 05, 2023

 

In 1975’s The Return of the Pink Panther, French inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) stands outside a bank, so busy reprimanding a blind busker (really a fully sighted lookout) for not having a license that he fails to notice that inside a robbery is taking place. When the robbers emerge, Clouseau mistakes them for members of the public and assists them into their vehicle. When the bank manager runs out, aiming his gun at the getaway car, Clouseau beats him over the head with his baton.

 

The level of incompetence with which policemen assist thugs and punish law-abiders is all too real in the United Kingdom. And not nearly so amusing.

 

The U.K.’s Terrorism Act of 2006 criminalizes the encouragement, inducement, or glorification of terrorism. Threats and incitement to violence are also unlawful. And yet, since October 7, instances of both have gone virtually unchallenged at anti-Israel protests throughout the country, while the innocent have been penalized.

 

At one demonstration, outside the prime minister’s residence, a protester shouted, “O beloved Abu Obaida” — a senior official of Hamas’s military wing — “hit and bomb Tel Aviv,” while police idly stood in the background. At another, a man was recorded chanting “jihad.” Senior Metropolitan Police officers responded by explaining that jihad can “mean a lot of things to a lot of people.”

 

Section 7 of the U.K.’s recently passed Public Order Act 2023 makes it an offense to interfere “with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure” including roads and railways. British police were happy to use this on Monday to arrest over 60 “Just Stop Oil” protesters blocking the road at Parliament Square. But when hundreds of anti-Israel protesters staged a sit-in at London Waterloo station, they did nothing.

 

A possible explanation is that the police are fearful. At several protests, they have been overwhelmed by protesters. In one video, a crowd is seen running after a police car, kicking it. Police have been assaulted and injured in large part because they are ill-equipped and outnumbered. This is a leadership problem. Yet rather than being given the clear direction and backup they need, officers are being instructed to focus on de-escalating “community tensions” — which, in some cases, has meant censoring and intimidating law-abiding citizens.

 

When the organization Campaign Against Antisemitism organized pictures of Hamas hostages to appear on the sides of vans driven around central London, the police told the drivers to turn off the display and leave for their “own safety.”

 

The official explanation given to Sky News by Mark Rowley, the police commissioner, was that the drivers with their “eh, er, some campaigning stuff going on TV screens on the side of their van”— again, pictures of hostages — might have collided “with a pro-Palestinian protest which was just ramping up in Whitehall.”

 

It’s hard to say which message is worse: We can’t protect you, or we won’t.

 

Even more infuriating were other instances in which police officers, captured on camera, tore down pictures of Israeli hostages themselves. Again, their explanation was that they were merely taking steps to “stop issues escalating.” Which apparently means doing Hamas supporters’ dirty work for them.

 

Anti-Israel mobs pose a significant challenge to law enforcement. But what is considerably less challenging is policing thought.

 

Take, for instance, the man arrested in his home late at night after he’d shared a video online. In the video, he complained about Palestinian flags in a London neighborhood. Saying “look at this crap here,” he zoomed in on the flags attached to road signs and lamp posts. “You let them into this country, and this is the sh** they come up with,” he said.

 

In another clip, a man tells a group of anti-Israel protesters that “there is a big problem in Islam. It is written in the Hadith, which all good Muslims believe, that the Prophet Muhammed was 50 or 53 years old when he sexually penetrated Aisha. She was nine years old.” As the protesters attempt to attack him, British police officers escort the man away and place him in handcuffs. Perhaps there is some context missing from this video. But it nevertheless seems jarring that criticizing Islam is followed by an arrest whereas physically attacking someone, as the anti-Israel protesters were doing, is not.

 

Perhaps the reputation of the police would be better if they didn’t do things such as parade around in LGBT rainbow gear, target a pro-life woman silently praying outside an abortion clinic, or arrest an autistic teenager for saying an officer reminded her of her lesbian grandmother.

 

Police say they have made tens of arrests at anti-Israel protests and promise to be more “ruthless.” But so far, video footage suggests their approach is more lackadaisical.

 

What’s clear is that things are getting out of hand. Antisemitic incidents have quadrupled in Britain since Hamas’s attack last month. National monuments have been desecrated with graffiti. The Foreign Office was splashed with red paint. On November 11, when the British mourn their dead from two world wars, anti-Israel protesters are planning a “march of a million” on the nation’s capital.

 

It will be a clash of civilizations. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has warned of a “clear and present risk” that war memorials may be “desecrated” and that “a number of protests are currently planned to disrupt” acts of remembrance. Sunak asked the Met Police to do “everything necessary to protect the sanctity of Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.”

 

Can the Met Police rise to the occasion? If not, bring in the army.