What is Boris Johnson frightened of – apart from losing the Tory party leadership (for which he is a racing certainty loser already)? He says he needs to be ready for trouble on the streets in the summer. But there’s not the slightest evidence for this – more’s the pity considering what Tory austerity has viciously (and unnecessarily) imposed on ordinary people and particularly the poorest.
Is this the normal Tory hankering after suppressing protest in all its forms? He says he can get them on the cheap by buying 3 German secondhand water cannons. But that doesn’t justify the principle of this development which has national implications. Furthermore every other argument tells against the rashness and folly of this decision.
These 30-tonne water cannon are classified as a ‘less lethal’ weapon, not a non-lethal one, because water cannon can kill. Moreover Germany, from which they are being bought, is phasing out this model precisely because it is not safe. It is these considerations that have prompted an internal government inquiry into whether it is sensible or necessary to go down this route. That inquiry is still on-going in the Home Office, but Johnson has jumped the gun (so to speak) and preempted Theresa May’s decision.
Then there is the question of what use they will actually be and how exactly they will be deployed. They would have been of little or no use in countering the riots in August 2011 since these were diffuse, highly fragmented, flexible and mobile. The only real use would be if a fairly rigid phalanx of protesters were drawn up facing police lines. But even the anti-G20 riots in 2009 were not of this kind.
There is a balance to be drawn between the police duty to maintain law and order on the one hand and the right of free assembly and for peaceful protesting subject to proportionate policing. This latest foolish decision by Johnson tips the balance far too much in one direction – towards oppressive control.
Moreover it could well be challenged under the human rights act. And the decision to allow the use of these cannons by the Met, by far the biggest police force, symbolizes the national implementation of a method of policing for which the police themselves are diffident, but which registers a step towards violent control techniques which are alien to British policing, unnecessary and without obvious practical use, and will not command political consent.