Lighting up buildings in 'solidarity' is virtue signalling and doesn't help anyone

A "show of unity" they call it. A man is killed by police in America and Bradford lights up its buildings in tasteful purple - solidarity, unity, Black Lives Matter. Hundreds engage in a 'socially-distanced' protest where they, completely out of any context or understanding, 'take a knee'. These scenes are repeated across the country, local leaders fall over each other to make noble-sounding statements about the evils or racism and how black lives matter. Companies issue tendentious statements of solidarity and endorsement, then rebadge their products, cups or containers in the appropriate, approved colours.

Elsewhere thousands grasping badly written placards descend on cities to shout and march. Solidarity, their supporters tells us, as they daub slogans all over statues and memorials, then throw things at the police before the most enthusiastic start a full blown riot. Hundreds of people hurt - 27 police officers in London yesterday - and thousands upset, looking on, at the disrespect for those who died in wars or for the men and women we remember as great leaders. Watching Black Lives Matter campaigners vandalise a statue of Abraham Lincoln, a man who lierally went to war because black lives mattered, brings on a sort of pained despair at the awfulness of this campaign.

Those tastefully lit buildings in Bradford provide cover for the thugs, communists and violent anarchists that have latched onto the terrible killing of a black man to excuse their destructive ideas. "Defund the police" they cry, often the same people who not so long ago were saying London's knife crime problems were down to cuts in police spending. The very same progressive leaders who bemoaned austerity now trapped by their left-wing fan base calling for cuts. All those righteous leaders, previously so keen to get their bit in the papers showing how down they are with the young people, scuttle off to their corners, keep their heads down and wait for it to blow over.

Meanwhile the achingly trendy progressives take to Twitter to explain that "antifa" just means anti-fascist and "aren't we all antifascist". Then, just like those progressive city mayors and councillors, they disappear back into silence as they see the violence unfold, the vandalism and the destruction. Perhaps (I live in hope) they realise that "antifa" doesn't just mean anti-fascist but is about planned and targeted political violence - the very thing that was always the badge of fascists, communists and their assorted anti-democratic fellow travellers.

We need to wake up and realise that, by indulging the exploitation of campaigns like Black Lives Matter, we do the cause of racial justice more harm than good. Yet the statement is so bland, so obviously right, that to say you don't support Black Lives Matter requires a nuanced explanation made more difficult by how saying 'all lives matter' has become (in the eyes of the righteous) a racist statement that can get a man sacked. Like Stop The War and Stand Up To Racism, Black Lives Matter is such a banal badge that it allows the extremists who, in effect, control the BLM brand a sort of licence that Anarchy Now or Smash The System doesn't quite carry.

If you're lighting up your city hall, sending out self-important emails for your brand, or changing the colour of your coffee cups so as to endorse Black Lives Matter, you probably need to stop and think for a second. Look at what you're enabling - from the valorising of riot through to the defunding of law enforcement - and perhaps hold off on getting down with the kids. This isn't an endorsement of racism or injustice but a recognition that just having a well-chosen brand doesn't make something good. Instead, when you get back to your offices, sit down and ask sensible questions about racism - are there problems with policing, is our recrutment 'colour-blind', are black people more likely to get stopped. If the evidence tells you things could be better (hint - it's not quite a straightforward as you think) then do something about it. Yes black lives matter but please stop the virtue-signalling with lights.

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The causes of bad policing...

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Since I'm going to write about rioting I shall start with an important caveat - when everything has been said and done riots are the fault of the rioter. There may be mitigation, perhaps a little explanation but there is never excuse. I remember Bradford's riots - thirteen years ago now but still a pretty vivid memory for many who recall what it was like:

Ilyas was captured on police cameras wearing an Afro-style wig and throwing burning cardboard through a broken window of Manningham Labour Club while 23 people were inside.  The club was burned to the ground after petrol bombs were thrown by a group of Asian youths.

That is the reality of riot as much as is the grievance that set light to the trouble. We should not forget this regardless of how we view the events that follow the riot. And we should remember that not everyone participating in the riot is doing so for reasons of protest - as we know from London's riots there are some who see the opportunity disturbance presents for a little light looting.

However all this doesn't explain or excuse another factor in the cause of protest and in escalating that protest to riot - bad policing. Here's a bit of an illustration in the words of NFL player, David Bass a native of Ferguson, Missouri:

“I was 15 and one of my best friends had just got a car from his mom, a white Lincoln, and he picked up my brother and I to go to The Loop. When we parked there were police behind us, and next thing you know, there are about 10 police cars surrounding us. They’re screaming, ‘Stay in the car! Keep your hands up! Hand over your IDs.’ People are starting to gather to watch. They took 45 minutes searching the car while we sat on the sidewalk."

 

I don't know whether Bass's memories exaggerate but, even if the incident was half as big it is still an unnecessary over-reaction from the police. An over-reaction that presages what has happened in Ferguson over recent days. A response that is all about bad policing and maybe a little bit of racism too.

But why is this? Why do police - whether in Bradford, in London or in a suburb of St Louis - get their actions so wrong? I've observed before that the police act too often as some sort of occupying army rather than the agents of a community protecting that community. Here in Bradford we have huge barracks with small windows looming over poor communities. Not just the buildings but the police vehicles and even the police are bristling with antennae and, when there's a disturbance it almost seems as if there's an excitement in the quasi-military response to riot.

And from what we've seen, the USA has even more of a problem - a police force now armed to the teeth on the back of false fears about terrorism. This militarising of the police - in terms of equipment and operations is what, in part, creates the tension between a poor community and the police whose job is to protect that community. Plus the fact that, regardless of the additional tension that stems from racial difference, those police officers are no from that community. Here in Bradford there are probably no police officers living in West Bowling or on the Allerton estate - like the social workers and community developers the police live elsewhere and visit just to ply their trade.

 

The second cause of bad policing is the tendency to see everything out of the ordinary as a threat to order - whether it's people saying unpleasant things on Twitter, folk gathering to protest some perceived injustice or simply the reaction to a crime or spate of crimes. And since "something must be done" us politicians respond with regulations that give the police more powers - we criminalise harmless possession, define disorder is such a way as to make almost any public action arrestable and we make the definition of 'anti-social behaviour' so wide as to provide the police with the power to make criminal things that even the politicians haven't defined as criminal.

 

As a result of these powers coupled with an aggressive quasi-military approach, we have replaced the idea of policing by consent with a different approach - policing as social control. With each additional power the business of law enforcement becomes less PC Dixon and more Judge Dredd with the police exercising almost arbitrary power underwritten by compliant magistrates and legislation so broadly defined as to remove any ability for peaceful resistance to the orders of a police officer.

In the end society has to respond to riot, looting and violence because decent people expect us to do just that. But we also need to ask whether tear gas, water cannon and armoured vehicles are the best way to respond. For my part I'm not sure they are the right approach since they reflect a macho, testosterone-fuelled response to disorder and merely act to build up resentment, grievance and the seeds of future disorder.

 

We need to return to the idea of policing by consent and rediscover real community policing - not merely as an operational strategy but as the entire purpose of policing. We do not need huge barracks where the brass hats dish out the orders for the day in some sort of war room. Rather we need what we lost - local police based in local police stations, the sort of places with a welcoming blue light over the door and police officers with familiar faces seen every day - more akin to Officer Krupke than to today's flak-jacketed cop with his face hidden in a helmet.

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