Under duress from a baying crowd, close to the seat of the British Parliament, Metropolitan Police officers "took the knee". At that moment the credibility of the British state suffered a crushing blow.
It is reported that police officers had been given permission to kneel to the mob - for that is what they did - if they saw fit. This fact alone tells us a great deal about those who are appointed to head London's Metropolitan Police.
Londoners, who have known for some time that The Met - as it is known - are no longer able to protect their young from the current wave of knife crime that plagues the capital, or to even respond to burglaries or car thefts, and who long ago took the decision, unilaterally and without any recourse to Parliament, to cease enforcing drug possession laws, must now gasp in despair.
It is, I believe, dangerous for British police officers to appear to take sides on such a divisive issue. It would be more dangerous still if a British officer felt obliged to kneel in front of a baying crowd, when to do so might not be physically safe. And it would be deeply unjust if any police officer were pilloried and condemned as ‘racist’ for refusing to kneel, whatever the reason.
This weekend saw mass actions in London, orchestrated by the usual politically motivated groups, and, as expected, marred by violence.
Even at a time when the city is on a high terrorist alert a notoriously violent far-left group - ANTIFA - has been permitted to openly operate, masked and in para-military style clothing, on the streets of London.
This is a group that is known to have received training at terrorist camps in Syria, and which has recently been designated as a terrorist organisation in the United States.
The above image shows the London ANTIFA flag displayed during an operation in Syria conducted with the Marxist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
As recently as May 2019 senior figures of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, has called for support for the PKK. At a meeting in North London, Michelle Gildernew, Sinn Fein MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, compared Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the terrorist group, with IRA poster boy Bobby Sands. The links are there for all to see.
Despite the protests being illegal under current restrictions, all the state was able to do was to issue flaccid "warnings".
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor of the Metropolitan Police confirmed to the BBC that the protests were "unlawful", but the best he could do was to suggest that demonstrators observe "social distancing". The crowd, described by the police as "angry and intent on violence", completely ignored this, as they completely ignored everything he and his officers said.
At the end of a day in which rocks, bottles, flares and bicycles were hurled at them, fourteen police officers were injured, added the the ten hurt earlier in the week, one seriously having suffered a broken collar bone, broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Just seventeen arrests were made.
Let us not pretend that this outrageous violence had anything to do with the illegal killing by a police officer of a man some 4000 miles away.
https://eutoday.net/news/security-defence/2020/the-day-britains-police-knelt
