KEEP THAT KETTLE BOILING
By Ian Hamilton QC
Glory to our Chief Constables!
Glory to our Superintendents of Police!
Glory to our devoted constables, man and woman, who kept the students in order!
Wherever three or four are gathered together in protest our vigilant police are there to kettle them in.
BUT WAIT A MOMENT.
Our democracy sometimes fails. Sometimes it even takes us to war on false pretences.
Our banking system has failed. It will only be propped up by the dismissal of hundreds of thousands of people. A penury is coming none thought possible. Mortgages will go unpaid. Children will suffer. Marriages will break. The salary-earner will find his, or her, ‘secure job’ has gone with the wind.
WHAT IS SUCH A PERSON TO DO?
He, or she, can listen to the Prime Minister.
THEN
He, or she, can take to the streets in protest marches.
OR CAN THEY?
The police have now found how to stop any protest march. They call it KETTLING.
It may be a new word but we all know what it means. If we have not ourselves been kettled we have seen it on TV.¬
It means the police form a violent cordon round the protest marchers and keep them in one spot for hours. It denies them the right to march in protest.
Where did the police get the power to act like this?
The answer is from nowhere. Ours is a democracy. A democracy means rule by the people. Neither the Scottish nor the English people gave any such power to anyone and certainly not to the police.
They have taken this power to themselves. The police are there to protect our rights. These rights include marching in protest. In the past these marches were part of democracy. They made it known to our rulers that there was discontent.
Now there is no way we can tell our rulers there is discontent. When the unemployed, the new unemployed, the people who until now have always held down good jobs………when the unemployed take to the streets in protest they will be violently kettled.
What is our Lord Advocate doing about these policemen? Prosecuting them for breach of the peace? Don’t make me laugh.
What is our Minister for Justice doing? He doesn’t control them but could utter a word of condemnation.
The answer to both questions is therefore ‘NOTHING’.
To whom are the police responsible? Nobody knows.
It suits any government to have police that make the public conform to ideas of decorum set by the police.
The greatest danger to our freedom comes from those who are there to protect it.
The greatest danger to our freedom comes from the police.
March 7th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Our society has grown to be interdependent with those who will serve to protect, but as you say it is now the case where the greatest danger to our freedom comes from the police.
What price are we paying for the freedom limits now allowed to us? Comply and accept to cope with the financial crisis that hits us all - except the immune few, or justly protest and the same police will cope with you!
Too many strange and un-natural decisions are eroding the public’s faith in both the police and the justice system and for this to continue requires the complicity of the people and this ultimately will be the straw the breaks.
Despair, rut-living, hopelessness, drugs, money-lending, fear and personal shame will produce its own society, its own cruel rules and no amount of police intervention will re-balance the lives that will be blighted.
That’s the legacy we have left to be dealt with - shame on us!
March 7th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Are we just, as a society, going to let the rule of the mob cause untold violence and destruction without a response from the autorities to control the baying mob?
With the officers on the front line, both men and women, bearing the brunt of the violent attacks by hooded menacing “students”, (put in italics to differ from the peaceful students who were the vast majority), they will always be easy targets of the learned classes and not-so learned classes.
Classes with axes to grind; and not just with bricks, stones and fire extinguishers.
Give them support. Not brickbats.
They’re the ones who protect society as well; but also by putting their bodies in the way.
They have the broken bodies to show it.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:16 am
Today I removed this blog from my Favourites. Nothing great in that, but as I did so I was asked “Are you sure you want to send “Ian Hamilton QC’ to the Recycle Bin?”
Now that is a question worth asking!
March 10th, 2011 at 1:24 am
Well Ian, looks like you’ve upset plod as well as the girning ugly-mug Elish Angiolini !
Not bad going for an auld coot.
March 10th, 2011 at 1:25 am
The police have always been willing tools of oppression for the moneyed classes against legitimate protest and legal strikes. Nothing new in that.
March 10th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
“Are we just, as a society, going to let the rule of the mob cause untold violence and destruction without a response from the autorities to control the baying mob? ”
Baying mob? Violence and destruction without a response from the authorities? How I wish I shared your optimism!
March 20th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
My memory of protesting is that a static protest or group gathering was lawful. If such a protest was to move or walk a particular route an application had to be made under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act. It is te movement that makes it unlawful and police are entitled to stop this.
May I just ask this Ian. You seem to passionate in your later years about civil liberties. I have been such since a young man, maybe you have I am unsure. However, did yo enter such please in every criminal trial you done when the police were breaching human rights and detaining people for six hours without access to lawyers.
I know you defended people in several criminal trials. Please link me to you legal arguments on this point you advanced before our Scottish criminal Courts. I do note from earlier posts you blame the English for s14 detention but seems to me Scots never advanced the breach argument until recently. Or were you all so blind to the obvious north the border….or maybe there is no profit on the legal aid advancing such arguments…I await your response sir.
April 11th, 2011 at 2:21 pm
“However, did yo enter such please in every criminal trial you done when the police were breaching human rights and detaining people for six hours without access to lawyers.”
Mr. Graham, do you actually read back what you write? Can we please have a translation? This is a forum where one comes on to read legal intellect not something that is written by someone clueless as to what they want to convey. Again, one only needs to read back all of your posts to realise your comments are all pointless and with no substance merely with the intention of attacking Mr. Hamilton. Perhaps you are venting your frustrations out at Mr. Hamilton for your own miscarriages of justice you have come up against. Either way surely you are not in the legal profession, god help us if you were.
Mr.Hamilton, I hope you are ignoring or laughing in your armchair reading these nonsensical posts. I salute your legal career, many of whom are evidently envious they will not achieve such success that of which you have.
With regards