The 16th August marked the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre when a gathering of people demanding democracy and the vote in central Manchester was declared illegal by Magistrates and Yeomanry on horseback rode into the crowd killing 18 and injuring many hundreds.
Two hundred years on Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Laurence Taylor suddenly decided to ban all Extinction Rebellion protests in London from 9pm on Monday evening quoting Section14 of the 1986 Public Order Act. Taylor claimed on social media that his action was proportionate and reasonable. It became clear that he had consulted no one about it, and certainly not the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which suggests it was anything but proportionate and reasonable.
More likely Taylor fell into the same mindset that had beset the Magistrates at Peterloo (without the Yeomanry thankfully) which is explained by E P Thompson below. Taylor no doubt is used to peaceful protests (which ER is) but ones which take place over a few hours and then everyone goes to the pub or home again. There may be the odd arrest but that is not an aim of the protest.
Now however Taylor finds a protest of people who not only dont go home but who also in some cases see being arrested as a point of principle. At this point his brow no doubt furrowed on what to do with this new form of protest (it was used by the Committee of 100 in the early 1960s but Taylor is far too young to know about that).
The ban hasnt really worked (see Trafalgar Square full on Wednesday afternoon) and DAC Taylor will have to account for his actions
E P Thompson on Peterloo Times Literary Supplement 1969
The magistrates were faced with a new phenomenon of which they had no understanding. The crowd was not attending a Whitsun walk nor even a miners’ gala. Its size, its discipline, its high morale, were ominous to the old order. Neither in the magistrates’ room nor in the crowd did men look forward complacently to 1832 and all that; it was more natural, in 1819, when two incompatible social forces confronted each other, to remember 1789.
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