It does the police no good if officers are thought to be at the beck and call of politicians. Such a system, relying on policing by consent, would quickly lose the trust of the public. That is why Lord Denning, the most celebrated English judge of the 20th century, argued that the responsibility for law enforcement ought to lie solely with the police. In a now famous judgment, Denning wrote that the chief constable “is answerable to the law and to the law alone”. Yet when it comes to demonstrations it appears that instead of police proportionately applying the laws of the land, officers are being cowed into serving ministerial interests.
Deferring to the executive branch has seen officers forced to apologise over the arrests of six protesters on coronation day. The proximate cause of the mess was the Home Office’s decision to expedite new criminal offences to prevent disruption into law last week. This gave the police powers to arrest the leaders of an anti-monarchy group, Republic, for having equipment that “could have been used as part of a ‘lock on’-style protest”. These turned out to be straps used to transport placards and were about as dangerous as the yellow T-shirts protesters were wearing. The police, it seems, were more bothered about images of disruption of a “once in a generation event” than the disruption itself.
