If Notting Hill produces its normal quota of stabbings, muggings, drug arrests etc, and not a huge riot, the liberal regime will be like a cock crowing on its pile.Now my info is that "only" 10,000-plus officers are being deployed. But I take the general point.
But they won't be emphasising that this wondrous display of diversity needed to be policed by 16,400 officers.
This is about twice the number of British troops in Helmand. It is about half the number of the security forces deployed at the height of the Troubles. It is less than half of the current size of the PSNI, with all the sectarianism that continues there.
It is about the same number of British soldiers deployed in England, Scotland and Wales at any one time during the 18th century; when there was no police force to speak of - and we are told that England was a very riotous place indeed.
If there is no riot then what a triumph of multi-culturalism it will have been.
UPDATE - he's got the PSNI bit wrong way round. The PSNI is less than half the size of the force deployed for Notting Hill.
26 comments:
According to everybody's favorite newspaper, 16,000 deployed or immediately available across London as a whole, the same as during the last night of the riots, and up to 6,500 at the festival of disorder itself.
Even so, the point is well made.
and what is going on in Ipswich?
the reports seem unusual for that area.
And how many are needed to police the Edinburgh Festival, as Tris points out here..?
You are naturally going to need more police to get control when they can get sued for giving someone a dirty look.
The Army have weapons, and so did the forces of law have in earlier days. Along with dirty cells to confine prisoners for as long as it took for them to see the error of their ways.
"The Army have weapons, and so did the forces of law have in earlier days."
Not necessarily.
During the 1780 Gordon Riots it took 5 days for reliable regiments to arrive in London to quell the riots, by forced marches. According to the "Newgate Calender" the Guards regiments in London were somewhat sympathetic to the political aims of the demonstrators at the start. There was of course no police force worthy of name
The rioters for the most part vented their fury on symbols of 18th century oppression - burning Newgate; firing the Fleet and King's Bench prisons; burning down the house of the Lord Chief Justice
It was the most violent outbreak in London's history, but even so parallels with the mindless, random arson and looting precipitated by the shooting of a gangsta and the subsequent alleged want of "respect" are not really awfully convincing.
And suppose there had been no security presence of any worth in London or Birmingham a couple of weeks ago?
One rather wonders what would have remained unburned and unlooted
"Oh well, that's often been the complaint, that immigrants ..." Here he interrupted himself. "They're not even immigrants, are they? They're born English!" Another snort. "I don't really have anything to say to that because it doesn't strike me as particularly relevant."
What does strike him as relevant is what some of the famous Londoners whose lives he has chronicled would have thought of the riots.
"William Blake would have joined them"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/peter-ackroyd-rioting-has-been-a-london-tradition-for-centuries-2341673.html
What a bloody old liar Ackroyd is
"It has been suggested that all the defiance and laughter of the incenduary mob are represented in one of Blake's drawings of this year, Albion Rose, which shows a young man stretching out his arms in glorious liberation. Yet the association is unlikely; the horror and pathos of the night's events instilled terror, not exultation, in all who observed them"
London - The Biography
If it is really "enriching" then why do they have to lie about it all the time?
Also Ackroyd waxes lyrical about the timelessness and continuity of "English music" in his books(Albion and English Music); gangsta rap doesn't really seem to demonstrate this.
I used to like his stuff - though Hawksmoor and Dan Leno were pretty disturbing
Additions to chatity shop stock perhaps
Ackroyd is suggesting a theory which he must know to be a lie.
"There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another."
London had no large-scale rioting for 178 years between the Gordon riots in 1780 and Notting Hill in 1958, which was itself nowhere near the scale of the 1980s riots. There were a couple of mass brawls involving Canadian soldiers after WWI, a one-off march/scrap at Cable Street, and that's about it.
None of those let to looting and/or large scale destruction.
last week's Observer quoted 20,000!
"Scotland Yard will double the number of police officers on duty at the Notting Hill carnival at the end of August to 20,000 – by far the biggest deployment in the event's 47-year history.
Met sources say that in the wake of the London riots it is planning 10,000 officer shifts for both days of the carnival, twice the number that policed the recent royal wedding and a level expected to match the London 2012 Olympics."
I was at the Royal Highland Show at Ingleston, tens of thousands of people there, alcohol freely available, warm weather, and about three policemen in attendance.
Two were directing traffic and one was instructing young farmers in quad bike safety.
Ever wondered what this country could be like if we had never let them in?
"Ever wondered what this country could be like if we had never let them in?"
Wondered? I know what it was like - I used to live there.
...a one-off march/scrap at Cable Street, and that's about it.
This violence largely instigated and carried out by immigrants.
"Ackroyd is suggesting a theory which he must know to be a lie."
They are verbatim quotes so "Londongrad Calling" didn't just fabricate it.
Tellingly in his book "London - The Biography" Ackroyd jumps straight from the Gordon Riots to Broadwater Farm, which effectively condemns his Independent musings through his own words.
I've been re-visiting old texts. Thus EP Thompson writes of the "Moral Economy of the Crowd in Customs in Common. What is striking really is the restraint of English rioters over the centuries in the face of desperate hardship and quite intolerable provocations; like the legal theft of rights in the commons leading to swift pauperisation. One Victorian historian wrote that the Swing rioters had been tried far beyond the point at which patience was a virtue.
I am sick beyond measure of the lies and calumnies these left-liberal multi-culti objects slander and libel our people with.
If it's go great why do they have to lie?
One is forced to the conclusion that this is because it isn't great at all
"...a one-off march/scrap at Cable Street, and that's about it.
This violence largely instigated and carried out by immigrants."
Correct.
"and what is going on in Ipswich?
the reports seem unusual for that area."
Presumably you mean the gang rape of the 3 15-year-old girls?
I wondered about this too, Especially when the local copper in charge of the investigation stated no less than three times in the space of a 30 second interview that this was "an extremely rare occurrence".
From past experience its often the case that there are "communities" involved when the police go to such great lengths to play down the significance of an incident
bodo
Pound to a penny, it's yet more enrichment
re update - now corrected
"It is more than twice the current size of the PSNI, with all the sectarianism that continues there."
Good post, but your mention of Cable Street in the comments seems to have attracted a couple of sotto voce revisionists. So let it be said that if ever there was a good excuse for a riot the Blackshirts were it.
"Oh well, that's often been the complaint, that immigrants ..." Here he interrupted himself. "They're not even immigrants, are they? They're born English!" Another snort. "I don't really have anything to say to that because it doesn't strike me as particularly relevant."
In Ackroyd's "Albion" there is an illustration of Hogarth's "Shrimp Girl".
Of which Ackroyd briefly commented that she "has, perhaps, a typically English face".
This hardly seems in accord with his musings in the Independent on those "born English"
Hogarth was famously xenophobic - eg Calais Gate,
I fancy he would have taken his cane to Ackroyd
'Ackroyd is suggesting a theory which he must know to be a lie.
"There's hardly a spate of years that goes by without violent rioting of one kind or another."
London had no large-scale rioting for 178 years between the Gordon riots in 1780 and Notting Hill in 1958, which was itself nowhere near the scale of the 1980s riots..'
Sorry, I feel you are very much mistaken on those points. Without too much effort I have managed to find the that in 1831 a mob attacked Apsley House, home of the Duke of Wellington, in 1833 The Coldbath Field Riot lead to the death of constable Culley. This was followed by the 'Garibaldi Riots' of 1862. Sunday Trading Bill riots in Hyde Park in 1855. 1866 Protests in Hyde Park organised by the Reform League, The Deptford Bread Riots on 1866-7. There was also rioting in Trafalgar Square in 1886 as well as schoolboy Protests in the 1880's and the suffragettes to name but a few. They don't sound like small scale disturbances to me and some of the Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park riots lead to looting in the West End. Interestingly enough the comments from newspapers and the great and the good are exactly the same as those you would read today, i.e that the police either did nothing or were too violent towards the rioters. Nothing changes including the various explanations offered up to explain the behaviour of the rioters.
Sorry to have to dispel your illusions but it is a bit of a myth that the times gone by were more peaceful than today.
"Without too much effort I have managed to find the that in 1831 a mob attacked Apsley House, home of the Duke of Wellington"
You might have expended a little more effort to discover the context; and then you would have found that there is no comparison with the recent mindless barbarism and savagery.
Wellington had rejected political reform, he thought that the unreformed British constitution was the most perfect that had ever been devised. In the countryside agricultural workers were starving. Wellington was - politically - perceived as a deeply reactionary figure. Tory governments of the period had been very repressive; in Manchester Yeomanry cavalry had cut down peaceful demonstrators with their sabres. The gov't had suspended habeas corpus, they had gagged the press; they had instituted a host of reactionary legislation
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/distress/gagacts.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Acts
Without other recourse the people rioted, and stoned his residence; breaking the windows
"in 1833 The Coldbath Field Riot lead to the death of constable Culley."
where a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned by a jury
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history-from-police-archives/Met6Kt/PublicOrder/poHvyHnd.html
Consider the attack on the Bartons Arms in Newtown, Birmingham
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8712891/UK-riots-new-CCTV-footage-shows-shots-being-fired-at-police-in-Birmingham.html
Is this an equivalent to a struggle for political rights by those who were oppressed and had none?
Anon 10.10
'Sorry to have to dispel your illusions but it is a bit of a myth that the times gone by were more peaceful than today.'
Whose illusions ? Orwell's for example, who famously wrote (in 'The lion & the Unicorn')?
'The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement.'
BTW until 1972 the LCC/GLC still collected rents from its tenants door to door, even on so-called 'tough estates' (my grandparents were GLC tenants at the time). Try doing that on, say, the North Peckham or Winstanley estates in 2011.
Mark
'The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement.'
Indeed, and that civilization was the product of the blood, sweat and tears of the English people.
Their struggles for political rights and a bit of fair dealing are now shamefully equated with the horrid arson and looting we saw a couple of weeks ago.
In Internet exchanges I have been particularly struck by the absurd comparisons that are trotted out as a matter of course eg the Blitz and Tottenham August 2011
It is painfully clear that the past, even a few generations ago, is now an undiscovered country.
I gather that history teaching has emphasised "skills" as opposed to knowledge, consequently there is no framework of reference to give context.
And when snippets are pecked out from this stony ground via wiki the "skills" that have allegedly been acquired do not suffice to draw sensible, or even sane, comparison.
Whether this has been by accident or design, conspiracy or cock up or some combination of both, I cannot say.
But what I do know is that it is more than deplorable; it is cancerous
"This violence largely instigated and carried out by immigrants."
You mean by Jews, AgainsTTheWall. Why the reluctance to name them as such?
Numerous Victorian-era London riots are documented in Jerry White's 'London in the Nineteenth Century' and Clive Bloom's 'Violent London'.
The orderliness of English public life observed by Orwell and others did not extend to the London mob until well into the latter half of the 19th century.
Deptford bread riots(thanks anon)
"In January 1867, at a time of high unemployment, the hungry crowd in Deptford were told that the depot which dispensed food to the poor had run out of bread. What happened was reported in one local paper under the headline 'The Unemployed Riots':
'On Wednesday evening some 300 or 400 of the unemployed perambulated the principal streets completely clearing out the bakers and other shops on their way. They commenced at the bottom of Church Street and by the time they reached the Broadway, most of the shops, including the public houses, were closed, and a large body of police on the place, who soon succeeded in restoring comparative quiet, though some bakers’ and other provision shops in High-Street have been since entered and denuded of their contents."
http://transpont.blogspot.com/2011/09/deptford-bread-riot-1867.html
Hardly convincing, the stones hurled by Henry Chubb, notwithstanding
"There were a number of arrests, including Henry Clubb of 5 Blackheath-Hill, who was charged with throwing stones at mounted police in Church Street (SLJ, 2.2.1867)."
And look, apparently they got some concessions out of the flint hearted Poor Law Guardians
Looting bread because you are semi-starving is not the same as setting fire to somebody's shop(and upstairs flat) and looting the contents, and it is an insult to our ancestors to pretend that it is.
You mean by Jews, AgainsTTheWall. Why the reluctance to name them as such?
Not reluctance particularly just not relevant in this thread. Enough to point out that it was nt the English who were to blame for the disorder.
So let it be said that if ever there was a good excuse for a riot the Blackshirts were it.
Why?
A great many English people opposed the Blackshirts, AgainsTTheWall. Don't try to make 'the English' synonymous with 'the Blackshirts'. The English are a decent people.
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