Without irony, cops just nicked four Just Stop Oil supporters in the middle of ACTUAL race riots
Without irony, cops just nicked four Just Stop Oil supporters in the middle of ACTUAL race riots
Two-tier policing
Ah during BLM, I watched many officers manhandle the women screaming at the racists and push them to the ground. Then politely telling the racists to please stay behind them to avoid getting injured.
What did RATM say about forces?
Police are class traitors.
Don't you understand? The oil protestors were going to delay flights and that hurts shareholders! We must never hurt the beloved shareholders!
Don't forget inconveniencing the unbothered! Can't have a mild inconvenience to someone's day.
This being Britain, it's more that the Lower Class fighting against an even lower class (and for most English, immigrants are the lowest class there can be since the English generally think they're inherently superior to foreigners) is fine, but the Middle and Lower class disturbing the interests of the Upper Class is unacceptable.
Britain is an incredibly classist country, not only by US standards but also by European standards and it's a lot easier to understand the dynamics of the use of Power over there if you look at the social class of those involved.
Why does the UK have so much more of this type of action than the US?
They've had longer to marinate.
Far older social system, with power far more entrenched in the hands of a few families and passed from generation to generation (and I don't mean just Royals - it's like an onion with layer after layer, most of which pretty static as that country has the lowest social mobility in Europe)
Further, England's social order never really got upturned by any kind of revolution from the lower classes or occupation by other powers - the closest it got to it was the Barons revolting against the King centuries ago, leading to the Magna Carta, which was a "revolution" of the elites.
Also the mindset of "know your place" and "look up to your betters" is well entrenched in the UK - there was a period of far more social movement and freedom in the Post War years, which is when things like the Punk movement came to be, but the conditions for all of that have been rolled back by now. That doesn't mean the English lower classes are peaceful, it means they only fight amongst themselves, never against "their betters", as demonstrated just now by what's happening there and for years in the form of Hooliganism.
Politically the UK has First Past The Post like the US (so, politically a power duopoly), only with a King who inherited his post rather than get elected and who has some real power (he can refuse to pass certain Laws and it has been shown that the Royals have used that in the past to get or change laws), and in addition to Parliament a second chamber, which is not elected and contains members who inherited their position and, maybe the worst part, no actual Constitution, which means that whomever gets more that 50% of seats in Parliament (which with FPTP only requires about 35% of votes) can make, removed and change any laws they want without being constrained in any area by a Constitution and the higher vote requirements for changing a Constitution.
Last but not least, the way people are coerced in that society it's by using "rules & regulations" to justify legal force - coppers don't run around and shot people (most don't even carry firearms) but there are plenty of vague enough laws that something can always be found if they want to detain somebody and the system is such that anybody detained who can afford a Solicitor with a knighthood (i.e. Sir Something) who went to the same private school as Judges and highly placed members of State - or, even better, is him or herself such a person - will have it sorted out in no time and the coppers will probably get into trouble with the chief for having detained such a person, but that's not so when one of the "riff-raff" is detained.
Personally and as an European, having lived in various countries of Europe including over a decade in Britain, I think right now that country is THE most Right-wing and Authoritarian country in Western Europe but it's all done in a "posh" way rather than the "in your face" way done in many other countries.
I think maybe my comment wasn’t clear. I meant why do we hear so much more about organized civil disobedience from the UK compared to North America, despite all of what you said. The anglophone countries tend to be fairly right wing as you point out, but only the UK seems to have this major resistance campaign going on, despite the repression.
Without taking away from the seriousness of the situation, that picture looks like a bunch of friends posing for a selfie in front of someone being detained.
I mean that is what it is. They know they are doing the right thing because their friend is getting arrested.
FTP?
ACAB!
... planning to do a crime is not "pre-crime." It's conspiracy.
Headline makes it sound like cops waded into one of these diet-Nazi events and picked out counterprotestors. Nah: they've presumably had warrants for these specific people on-hand since before all that kicked off.
Police have discretion on which crimes to prioritize. They're not honor-bound to ticket someone who is double-parked in the middle of a car chase. They can opt not to arrest people for trespassing if it gets them to cooperate with a murder investigation.
Going to arrest pacifists engaging in criminal conspiracy to temporarily block nonessential industry and infrastructure at one location while ignoring ongoing racially motivated assault, looting, and arson is a choice.
I don't think they were prioritizing one group over the other I think they just did two things at the same time there's more than like five cops you know.
I would love it if the world would be a better place but I don't think the way just stop oil protesters are going about it is helping anyone including themselves. Totally understand why they're arrested.
For anyone else wondering, nicked means arrested
Oh thanks. In freedom speech it means lightly grazed.
My first thought was, "They what? They stole protestors? Meaning kidnapped? But that's not how it's spelled....."