The day Blighty fell apart

September 15, 2004

There are a few well-sung days in history that everyone is supposed to remember. I was not around for the Kennedy assassination, but I remember what I was doing the day the Challenger space shuttle blew up.

But there are quite a few more unsung days that ought to be better remembered.

On Friday, a very small number of British journalists recalled the day the police force in Britain came out with its new look for New Labour.

Gerald Warner recalls it: the day the police clashed with a bunch of wellie-wearing, tweed flat-capped country people and bashed in some heads.

Well, you see, these were people who were standing in the way of Tony's efforts to save the cute little furry woodland creatures from the nasty upper-class English who wanted to shoot them. But really, it was a message sent out to the bastions of traditional British culture. "It's over people. The Britain you knew is no more and this is what will happen to you if you try to bring it back."

The Macpherson Report became the charter for the new politically correct gendarmerie that was designed to act as a force of repression against the law-abiding majority, to promote the privileged position of an assortment of minorities.

The date on which this transformation was dramatically manifested was September 15, 2004 when 1,300 police aggressively clashed with pro-hunting demonstrators in Parliament Square. The Countryside Alliance has published the facts and figures relating to that disgraceful episode. Countryside supporters suffered 40 serious head injuries and 425 complaints were lodged with the IPCC. Regulation 9 notices were served on 31 officers and 17 officers had files on their conduct passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for alleged crimes ranging from Common Assault to Actual Bodily Harm.

There were no convictions and no disciplinary action was taken, even against officers who had removed their ID - one of the complaints also being levelled at police involved in the G20 confrontations. The IPCC's 14-month inquiry produced no action whatsoever. Unlike the aggressive behaviour and deliberate purpose of anarchist demonstrators to trash banks, the Countryside Alliance demonstrations were invariably models of civility: they even picked up their own litter.

From the Mail:

The truncheons are going up and down like steam pistons. A man with blood all over his head gets another whack from a policeman in full riot gear.

A 37-year-old mother of two young boys, who has been pushed forward from the crowd by sheer pressure of bodies, is following a police order to 'get back' when an officer comes up behind her and pushes her to the ground.

Bleeding from a head wound and bruised all over, she is being comforted by a female friend when another police officer comes along, sits on the friend and forces her arms behind her head.

(...)

All around, there are bloody faces and bloody clothes. By the end of the day, the police will have inflicted dozens of what the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will describe as 'serious head injuries'.

And yet, as these battered protesters make their way home - or come round in a hospital bed or a police cell - the voices of the liberal Left are strangely silent.

(...)

As far as the Metropolitan Police commanders are concerned, these were Tory-voting country folk and, thus, anathema to the metropolitan elite in charge of the country. So the police thought they deserved a good kick, too. And they got one..