The past, as we know, is another country and they do things differently there. Take, for example, the Wilkesite Riots of the 1760s, when the London mob responded to an incompetent and unpopular government’s hounding of the radical rake John Wilkes by smashing the windows of every fine town house that failed to display either a banner declaring “Wilkes and Liberty” or a copy of the notorious issue 45 of Wilkes’ magazine The North Briton, which ministers had charged with seditious libel (as well as arresting Wilkes on general, unspecified warrants and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a fellow habituée of the Hellfire Club, challenging him to a duel). Indeed, one tumultuous evening part of the mob spotted a coach containing the Austrian Ambassador, representative of one of the most reactionary and oppressive governments in Europe, dragged the unfortunate diplomat from his vehicle, upended him and wrote the number “45” on the soles of his shoes and then smashed his carriage to matchwood.
A few years later, during the Gordon Riots of 1780, the London mob stormed and destroyed Newgate Prison, an action which many who took part – including the young William Blake – subsequently considered the equivalent of the storming of the Bastille nine years later, and were left to reflect ruefully on how the crowd’s revolutionary fervour dissipated once it had sacked a distillery in Fleet Street.
And 40 years after that, during the coronation of Prince Charles’ great-great-great-great-great uncle George IV, the mob were so disgusted by the king’s treatment of his ex-wife, Caroline of Brunswick, that on her behalf they tried to break down the doors of Westminster Abbey with a battering ram.
Of course, in those days, rioting mobs were more or less accepted by the establishment as part of the political process. Hardly anyone had the vote and the aristocracy ruled entirely in its own interests. It was therefore considered reasonable to allow the people to let off steam now and again, and if a few windows got broken and it was wisest to hide in your cellar if you lived in the smart parts of town, well, that was better than the way they did things in France, before or after the fall of the Bastille.
So what should anyone expect when, once more, you have an unmandated government, governing solely in the interests of the elite, who demonstrate the futility of voting when part of it performs a complete volte face over the policy that allowed it to win as many seats as it did? As with the poll tax, when an arrogant and complacent government blithely displays its utter contempt for us, the people, the streets are about the only place left to go.
But a decade or so of relative calm means that many people have forgotten how to do public disorder. So while many MPs are now perhaps too young to have seen Dr Zhivago, they should probably reflect on the fact that pictures of children being subjected to cavalry charges usually ends up playing rather badly in the country as a whole. Nor have the police or the Government yet worked out that the unled and unstewarded demonstrators least likely to cause trouble are the ones too naive or insufficiently nimble to escape being kettled.
In other words, the young people held against their will in the freezing cold for up to 10 hours by policemen dressed as imperial stormtroopers from Star Wars are the respectable middle class professionals of tomorrow: the doctors, teachers, lawyers, bankers and – oh yes – politicians who have now been thoroughly radicalised by Tory and Liberal Democrat lies and police stupidity. Although it’s always just possible that things aren’t quite as they seem.
It’s likely that the police really are as dumb as we’ve always assumed, and so it was that which allowed Conservative Central Office to be stormed and occupied, thousands and thousands of middle-class children to be brutalised into radicalism and the heir to the throne’s safety to be hideously compromised.
But it’s also worth reflecting that the leaders of this Government, despite their fine education and a gift for tactical cunning, might themselves really be much, much stupider than we ever dared fear.
I know that David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg are all terribly posh, but is it altogether wise, this late in the game, for the upper classes to start waging war on the bourgeoisie, particularly through their children?
And at a time when we’re told we have to discard all the worthwhile bits of the state to save future generations from the shame of sovereign debt, does it quite make sense to tell those same generations that they can now expect a lifetime of personal debt?
And, to return to the police, you would imagine that beneficiaries of the best classical education money can buy might have remembered, as they set about slashing police numbers, what every Roman emperor knew instinctively – even if it was literally the last thing that crossed their minds. The one thing you should never do is piss off your own praetorian guard.
On which comforting note, let me wish all of Tribune’s readers a very merry Christmas. Next year is going to be a lot more interesting that many people yet realise.
