Riot, Act

A year in prison for staging a one person protest, because apparently a one person protest is objectionable in itself? 10 years if your demonstration was "annoying"? The deportation of any foreign national who attended any demonstration, on the say-so of a single Police Officer? Gypsies to have to carry special internal passports? The Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill has David Blunkett written all over. It has made almost nostalgic those of us whose early adulthood had been blighted by the Blair Government.

Unsurprisingly, Labour's only initial objection to it was that it did not go far enough. But then a policeman killed a middle-class white person, and his gangmates roughed up middle-class white people who had turned out to object. All hell broke loose. Beating a woman half to death, however, is no more a riot on Clapham Common than it is a riot in the privacy of her own home. A riot is when someone sets fire to an empty Police van the MOT on which had expired, presumably meaning that no claim on the insurance would be possible.

To save a Bill to extend their powers drastically, the Police drove into a previously peaceful demonstration in the knowledge that someone would then attack their vehicle, thereby giving the pre-briefed media a story. There is almost never violence on any demonstration in Britain until the Police wade in, camera crews in tow. The most infamous example was of course at Orgreave. But there is now justice even for the Shrewsbury 24. There is every reason to hope for justice for Orgreave.

We may have to wait rather longer for full justice for Hillsborough, though. One of the 96 died too late to be included, but as it stands, it is the law of the land that 95 people were unlawfully killed that day, yet somehow they were unlawfully killed by no one.

Since 1990, 1433 people have died following Police contact. You are eight times more likely to be killed by a Police Officer than by a terrorist. Yet no Police Officer has been found to have been criminally responsible for a death since 1969, and never in British history has a Police Officer been convicted of murder. Absolutely nothing will be permitted to break those records.

Wayne Couzens is 48. Give it two years. He will be found to have made an error on the paperwork, and he will be pensioned off. That will be that. By then, moreover, it will be a criminal offence to object, under legislation on which Labour will have abstained at Third Reading, if it had not voted in favour.