Kettling ...

During the latest round of student protests in London, the Metropolitan Police decided to restrain the movement of the protestors for fear of further damage to property and risk to people, whether involved in the protest and not - this form of riot control can be very uncomfortable and it has been called 'kettling'.

Some of the protestors call the technique 'absolutely outrageous' - but some commentators disagree, concluding that it is 'just boring, even for the police'.

The sadness of the criminal and violent acts that were committed by a not insubstantial number of people at Millbank two weeks ago is that the Metropolitan Police found themselves in the difficult position of having failed in their sometimes impossibly conflicting tasks of facilitating the legitimate (protest) while preventing the illegal (mostly criminal damage, but it does, on occasion, go further).

I am intensely uncomfortable at the thought that thousands of young people, including teenagers, can be held against their will without access to basic facilities for several hours, especially when the protests are taking place in the coldest period of the year ... it offends my sense that people should be permitted to protest as freely as possible.

But, and it is a big 'but', two weeks ago, the Police were faced by a protest where the organisers either lost control of their protest, or where they intended some in the protest to break the law ... and having experienced that, the Police have a obligation to see what they can do to prevent repetition.

I should add that where individual policemen (it tends to be men) indulge in violence themselves, then they need to be held to account for their actions; with swift criminal action being taken against them if necessary.

Students (indeed anyone) who protest(s) do not have the right to damage property belonging to anyone else.  That some of the student leaders appear not to understand this basic proposition rather reduces the impact, both of the protest and of the student leaders themselves.  The real cause of the change in tactics by the Metropolitan Police are the past actions of the protestors themselves and the failure of the leaders of the protests to control the message that they want to send and the manner in which that message is sent ... if they get their control structures right, then I suspect that the Police will not resort to 'kettling' the protestors who participate.