Collective punishment and pre-emptive policing in times of riot and resistance

If austerity is our destiny, as UK Chancellor George Osborne would insist, we should anticipate that some of us will not embrace our fate quietly. The student demonstrations of early 2011 and the revolts which followed the police killing of Mark Duggan clearly demonstrated as much. The anticipation of further revolts, in the face of a deliberate drive through austerity to maintain the creditworthiness of British capital at the expense of the working class, has led state agencies to reconsider the form of policing adopted as part of the machinery of austerity. What is particularly interesting is that the model they chose is that which was adopted in the Six Counties [of Northern Ireland] to repress the nationalist community. Arming police with a range of weaponry has been prioritised. The new commissioner of the Metropolitan police (Met), Bernard Hogan-Howe, said that every police car should have a Taser. [1] There are already 2,000 Met officers authorised to carry Tasers and Hogan-Howe’s plan would lead to Tasers being carried in 6,500 police cars. [2]