By IRNA,
London : Britain’s most senior policeman on Thursday predicted that the country was facing a new era of violent street protests over government cuts to public services.
“We have been going through a period where we have not seen that sort of violent disorder,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said in reference to two student protests in the last two weeks that erupted in violence.
“Obviously you realise the game has changed. Regrettably, the game has changed and we must act,” Stephenson said when giving evidence to the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA).
His warning came as students criticised the controversial police tactics of ‘kettling’ protesters and announced another round of marches and walkouts to be staged next Tuesday.
Stephenson insisted that the tactic, which police prefer to call ‘containment’, had been necessary during Wednesday’s demonstrations in London, when some 5,000 students were penned in streets adjacent to parliament for several hours.
But the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, which coordinated the mass of walk-outs, occupations and marches by university students and school pupils across Britain, criticised the kettling as “absolutely outrageous.”
‘Children as young as 13, 14, or 15 were not allowed to leave and were intimidated by hundreds upon hundreds of riot police and treated very badly when all they were doing was exercising their democratic right to protest,’ said NCAFC spokesman, Simon Hardy.
Critics of the tactics that forcibly kept demonstrators in a small confined area for hours also warn that it can be provocative and lead to more violence as happened in Wednesday’s protest.