London, Water Cannons and the Dangers of Suppression

After discussions about it back in January, the Met Police have formally requested and received clearance to purchase water cannons (BBC, 2014). That decision has brought London one step closer to seeing them deployed on the streets, with only one major remaining obstruction - permission is first required from the Home Secretary, currently the Conservative Teresa May (Travis et al, 2014).

The decision to seek out such armaments for the police is a troubling move. Protesters in many countries are already being faced with regular suppression by police armed with water cannon and tear gas, and it is sad that the UK government has not chosen to buck that dangerous and illiberal trend.

As various progressives have expressed, from leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg (Wintour, 2014) to a Guardian editorial (The Guardian, 2014), water cannon are a reactive, suppressive mechanism. They provide police forces with more weapons with which to suppress dissent, but do nothing to address the reasons for unrest. In fact, it may even create more reasons for unrest, with accounts of the injuries suffered by those on the receiving end of water cannon making grim reading (Travis et al, 2014).

While it might be argued that they can break up an ongoing incident, the mass student-led Chilean Winter protests in Chile have shown that the use of such tactics - protests being quashed repeatedly by police using tear gas and water cannons (Aljazeera, 2014) - does little to dissuade those who will protest from doing so (Franklin, 2011). The campaigns in Chile have run now for four years, and water cannon has done little but make for some very unpretty coverage.

And there-in lies a dangerous consequence of suppressing tactics. Unpretty news coverage, pictures of protesters beaten and downtrodden, can only create a dangerous perception in the minds of those watching, about the values of a country and the methods of its government.

In Brazil, these kinds of questions have already been raised. Money has been spent of extravagence and the suppression of dissent rather than on providing the socially supportive schemes demanded by the people that might address the actual causes of unrest (Hughes, 2014).

The UK, the US, and other parts of the western world, have already been criticised over double-standards towards police tactics and government suppression of dissent (Sherlock, 2013). Pushing further into such territory can only be considered troubling. With a background of government budget cuts being met by prolonged and well attended protests, the UK government arming itself in order to suppress unrest does not give the best of impressions (The Guardian, 2014).

Fears of the suppression of civil protests is already high around the world, from Chile and Brazil to Turkey and across the Arab world. Protesters campaigning for political reform, and for general progressive measures, have been met everywhere with resistance by authorities.

It would make a real difference for a nation to move in a different direction, to set a new trend by rejecting suppression. Choosing security over liberty, the path to suppression, only escalates conflict. In the face of disillusionment with unequal societies, turning the debate over reform into a battle between the people protesting for reform and the state protecting the privileged establishment, is a surefire way to make matters worse.

Our actions always send a message. They become the legitimising precedents used by those who come later, and as the facts used to judge our character. So what kind of message do water cannon send to the people of the UK about their government? What kind of message does it send to the people of other countries? What do we want our actions to stand for?

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References:
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+ The BBC's 'Metropolitan Police given permission to buy water cannon'; 11 June 2014.

+ Alan Travis, Rowena Mason & Vikram Dodd's 'Cameron and May at odds over Boris Johnson's water cannon'; in The Guardian; 11 June 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Water cannon won't stop riots in London, says Nick Clegg'; in The Guardian; 12 June 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'The Guardian view: no water cannon in London'; 11 June 2014.

+ Aljazeera's 'Tear gas used at Chile protest over education'; 12 June 2014.

+ Jonathan Franklin's 'Camila Vallejo - Latin America's 23-year-old new revolutionary folk hero'; in The Guardian; 8 October 2011.

+ Thomas Hughes' 'Own Goal: How Brazil is Stifling the Right to Protest'; in The Huffington Post; 2 June 2014.

+ Ruth Sherlock's 'Turkey protests: Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses EU of double standards'; in The Telegraph; 7 June 2013.