August 3, 2024 - 5:43pm
Government advisor John Woodcock has called for Covid-style lockdowns to suppress anti-immigration protests triggered by the Southport stabbings.
Speaking to Times Radio, Woodcock argued that the current level of unrest in Britain could constitute an emergency in which “further action” would need to be taken. “New ministers in office will understand that the British public will back them in whatever measures they feel are necessary to get this situation under control,” he said. “We should cast our minds back to the days of Covid where the public accepted an emergency situation that we prepared to back and lawmakers were prepared to support”.
“The British public will back them in whatever measures they feel are necessary to get this situation under control.”@LordWalney calls for a covid-style response to rioting across England.@CalumAM | @ChloeTilley
Listen Live: https://t.co/rFjpAGEBot pic.twitter.com/Q0YBEKxIlM— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) August 3, 2024
Police forces have been trying to contain clashes between anti-immigration groups and counter-protesters across the North-West. More than 30 rallies are planned this weekend after three children were stabbed to death in Southport last week. In the last 24 hours, protesters have attacked police and started fires in the North-East city of Sunderland, with further unrest occurring in Blackpool, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and other cities.
John Woodcock, who serves as a government advisor on political violence, told Times Radio that if the protests did not “peter out”, then the Government would have public support to take stronger measures. “In Covid the [British public was] able to back measures that were needed in that situation,” he said. “They would take a similar approach to keep rioters off the streets to see the scale of damage being done to communities”.
Woodcock, who was appointed the Government’s independent adviser on combating political violence in 2020, has historically taken a hardline approach to protests. In May this year, a report published by Woodcock, whose title is Lord Walney, recommended banning activists from holding protests near defence manufacturing and energy sites. The former Labour MP claimed “militants” were “terrorising” workers without fear of consequence.
The report also argued that organisers of large-scale protests, such pro-Palestine demonstrations, should be required to contribute to the cost of policing. “The government should consider the viability of requiring protest organisers to contribute to policing costs when groups are holding a significant number of large demonstrations which cause serious disruption or significant levels of law-breaking,” it read.
Woodcock’s report was presented in the House of Commons as a “motion for unsupposed return” and published as a parliamentary paper. This allows the report to have parliamentary privilege, which prevents the groups named in it from claiming its contents have defamed them.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to expand facial recognition surveillance in response to the protests. ‘These thugs are mobile,’ Starmer said. ‘They move from community to community, and we must have a policing response that can do the same shared intelligence, wider deployment of facial recognition technology and preventative action criminal behavior orders to restrict their movements before they could even board a train, in just the same way that we do with soccer hooligans.”
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SubscribeIf this ageing Nineties boyband member is indeed the Government’s “Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption”, then he has presumably appeared in public to announce his resignation.
The conservative minded white middle class have to join the protests, organise them better, and make it legitimate. I actually like the name Enough is Enough.
Also, typical of ‘regime slime’ to suggest treating already dispossessed white people like a disease.
The conservative minded white middle class have to join the protests
Yes. But you don’t have to be conservative to be opposed to the imposition of a police state.
“Yes. But you don’t have to be conservative to be opposed to the imposition of a police state.”
Yes, this is very true, I hope actual liberals of the left also join in. I think I was trying to say that middle class people who don’t hate white working class should get involved…so no Lilly Allen’s.
Not sure anyone hates a whole strata of our society. No what the yobs rioting need to grasp is they are being played and having their disaffection monetised by on line conspiracists.
Not sure anyone hates a whole strata of our society.
Well, you clearly do.
Which rock have you been living under this century? The modern Left absolutely despises the white working class. This hypocrisy has been a national embarrassment for decades.
I hope actual liberals of the left also join in.
No such thing anymore, I’m afraid.
Not a hope in hell VJ. They’ve no time for the yobs and sowers of hate. Granted they’ll be the odd Golf club bore who’s never met a Muslim and thinks Sharia law coming next week to their village, but every village has an idiot.
Here we go again, copying the playbook of the world’s leading repressive state. Using Chinese Communist Party techniques in a democracy, what could go wrong?
Nobody should be surprised. Starmer has never made any secret of his extreme authoritarianism.
Are you consistent in your view? Or oppose pro Palestine protests (btw I’m very pro Israel!) while fully supporting people besieging a mosque which had nothing at all to do with the Southport stabbings?
It seems to me, you missed one very important point – Why did people attack the mosque without information and why, even if they had this information, would they still attack the mosque?
Any country with a generous welfare system, that is at the end of the economic migrant trail, will experience Britain and Ireland’s current problems.
The evolution of UK law has served us well in these situations but is of no use whilst the UK is subservient to International Lawfare.
Starmer is an International Lawfare practitioner to his core and will not back down from this course.
“Any country with a generous welfare system, that is at the end of the economic migrant trail, will experience Britain and Ireland’s current problems.”
Look, I’m sure that this is a really stupid question to which there’s a sensible and obvious answer but why does HM Government make welfare payments to migrants? Should those who come to live here be required to have, say, five years paying tax before being allowed any benefits?
An asylum seeker gets £45 a wk to feed themselves. Probably cheaper than having them starving and committing crime to eat. They are not allowed to work so can’t earn to feed themselves.
Not sure what you mean by ‘migrants though’. Remember the last Govt allowed c600k net migration in last year, primarily after businesses asked for visas as workforce shortages. So the vast majority of migrants will be working. An illegal migrant doesn’t get anything as they are illegal.
Interestingly the EU free movement treaty included the ability to insist on £30k of capital. UK never applied this rule.
UK never applied this rule.
Why would we. So long as a migrant can pay rent he/she is fulfilling the fundamental function of making the rentier class richer at the expense of the working poor.
I think the better and clearer criticism – helping suppress wages and reducing requirement for some Businesses to invest and/or train more of their own. The other rule we didn’t insist on was all jobs advertised first in UK. Remarkable wasn’t it.
Why does the UK government put these illegal arrivals up in hotels? Why not leave them alone to support themselves? When I go to another country, I don’t get a free hotel!
To avoid a begging epidemic and a crimewave.
In Ireland they can work after 12 weeks and retain free accommodation, meals, health care and a small financial payment each week in addition to the salary. Its an amazing opportunity and that’s why we have asylum seekers from the UK and the USA in Ireland right now.
If the Labour government wish to inflame an already volatile situation, they could take the advice of this non-entity. Anyone who thinks the public would accept “Covid-style restrictions” in the current situation hasn’t got the faintest clue what they’re talking about. It’d simple exacerbate the protests beyond anything the police could possibly cope with.
Has he even thought of the economic costs to small businesses who’re already struggling, for instance? Any such measure would wreck the fragile economy and push the country into a downward spiral such as we’ve rarely seen, or at least in a self-inflicted way.
The lockdown restrictions were popular simply because millions of people got a year off work on 80% pay. If the restrictions were reintroduced on the same basis, they will be just as popular.
Of course, all sane policymakers now understand that this cripplingly expensive policy mistake was not simply a matter of printing some money and then going back to business as usual afterwards: the economy, which seemed to be infinitely capable of absorbing inflationary pressures over the decade prior to 2020, turned out to be fragile after all, and in addition millions of people decided that there was no way they were going to return to the 5 day commute.
The economic damage will never heal fully, even Labour isn’t reckless enough to think there’s a free lunch on this, so these restrictions, if they’re introduced, will not contain the free money dimension. I suspect therefore that it’ll be something more like curfews outside of working hours. I almost hope they try it: it might mean we won’t have to put up with 5 whole years of what increasingly looks like a terrible government, one that will make us all wish we had Rishi in charge again.
Eh? Small businesses just love vast mobs of people protesting for one cause or another blocking the streets and intimidating people from going about their lawful business.
I also think you massively underestimate how authoritarian the average Brit actually is, as public surveys have shown.
Nah, its just a game with him, he doesnt care about costs to people who cant work from home.
So one of the first acts of a Labour government should potentially be effectively enacting martial law?
I wonder how that’s going to pan out?
The current bunch of politicians might be inept, out of touch, and self serving (same as their predecessors and theirs, ad infinitum) but I seriously doubt that they’re suicidal.
It would guarantee to trigger modern version of the Peasants Revolt but with a very different outcome.
The current bunch of politicians might be inept, out of touch, and self serving
They’re really not that good. Are you some sort of Labour spin doctor.
Yes of course but it allows a bit of mouth foaming on Unherd, which helps the community feel as one.
Careful with that spittle of yours, JW
There’s always the guardian if you want to read a different take JW.
‘wider deployment of facial recognition technology’
Facial recognition use by South Wales Police ruled unlawful
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-53734716
I’d quite like 2tierKier to take the advice of this idiot. Many of us, during Covid, came to the conclusion that the feckless Government of the day could not be allowed to remove our rights with the alacrity they demonstrated for so doing, and took to the street to signal our vehement disapproval. I would certainly be up for civil disobedience should similar repressive measures be employed against us, not least against those who might find it difficult to articulate their concerns, but know in their hearts that we are currently moving to a very dark place.
Is there a problem with posting comments? Mine has just disappeared. Odd.
Mine are regularly removed, although I am very conscious about the rules. Some of the removed posts were absolutely innocuous. The fact itself that they have all been subsequently restored proves that the removal was arbitrary.
I consistently write to Unherd Support asking why specifically my comment has been removed. Soon after that, they restore it.
I would suggest that you do this every time your comment disappears, to signal more clearly that something is wrong with their moderation system.
If more people do it, then hopefully UnHerd will finally rethink the way the comments are moderated.
The Tiber is indeed starting to foam
You’re still waiting 60yrs later?
One week of drizzy rain and with the football season starting again it’ll dissipate. The yobs got no staying power, esp once a batch of them huddled up in cramped cells without access to the conspiracy bile.
A government advisor on political violence is akin to having a pit bull terrier advising on the prevention of dog bites.
I know this guy Woodcock. He’s quite weird and utterly paranoid. No-one, least of all the government, should pay any attention to him.
You mean the former Labour MP for Barrow, among other matters, now Baron Walney?
Married to Isabel Hardman, Assistant Editor of the Spectator.
Oh dear, seems the Baron’s not quite on message, who’ll tell him of the HMG policy of controlled spontaneity?
Also, some memory jogging required ; where was his advice when pro-palestinian terrorist sympathisers marched through our cities desecrating the memories of the fallen, flying their treacherous flags, screaming hatred and anti semitic chants?
All this for right wing thugs, yet left wing and Islamic thugs can scream for ‘death to Jews’ while disrupting London and elsewhere every week. Apparently the right wing thugs are extremists, unlike those for calling for the massacre of Jews.
The only effect of using more facial recognition will be for the right wing thugs to copy the left wing and Islamic thugs by wearing masks.
“COVID style” even.
Forgive me, but, as I understand, the Palestinian protesters, ugly as their behaviour can be, stays within the law. Just.
I believe they have shown some “skill” in pushing up to the legal limits but not beyond.
The most recent protests have involved people chucking bricks at policemen. These protesters are not within the law.
I agree that some the Left and Islamic protesters are thugs but they have been more canny.
I have more sympathy with the anti-immigration protests than the Palestinian protests but reckon that the former represent a cry of frustration. The latter are more deliberate and conscious.
Indeed. Painfully the Far Right encouraged Yobs are showing they have fewer neurons. The clowns haven’t been wearing masks and will find many of them get a tap on the door this week.
That said I think Police should have pulled a few of Hamas supporting demonstrators for hate speech. They probably thought let’s not trigger anything as demo passing off largely peacefully so can understand the pragmatism and a very difficult thing to then secure a conviction too. But a few being made an ‘example’ I think would have been worth it.
The entire establishment is terrified of Muslims. Which makes it kind of ironic when they accuse other people of ‘Islamophobia’.
“Forgive me, but, as I understand, the Palestinian protesters, ugly as their behaviour can be, stays within the law.”
No actually, they’re just relying upon biased and inconsistent enforcement of the law. The words “from the river to the sea” are part of chant/song/whatever that celebrate a future genocide upon Israel, and if this form of words were ever used on the street aimed at Muslims or any other minority, it would constitute a hate crime, or possibly even one of the traditional crimes of incitement to violence.
No time for Hamas supporting types and I’d lock them up for chants like that but there is a slight difference. The yobs now are lobbing bricks at the Police, setting fire to businesses and looting shops – actual violence.
A link from Aris’ article yesterday. “Mostly peaceful”, memories are short.
https://x.com/BBCNews/status/1269574979680702470
That headline is hilarious, isn’t it? Next it will be ’12 Israelis killed in largely peaceful attack on Golan heights football match’.
Yes, and these protesters aren’t called extreme of course.
I was wondering how long it would be before the totalitarian instincts of this government were revealed. The mendacity behind the covid lockdowns now appears to be the playbook.
Oh good grief do you really think this fella has that much influence. Half the blinkin world suggests they’re a Govt advisor. And besides Govts will take advice from multiple sources. He was also, it appears employed by the previous Govt.
Besides, this government really don’t need an ‘advisor’ to tell them how to be authoritarian. Starmer has read quite enough Trotsky to figure it out for himself.
And to think I was mildly optimistic about the new government.
No way will we accept that abuse again. The public want the boats stopped and mass remigration. End Islam in Europe before we are swamped and have to submit.
“More than 30 rallies are planned this weekend”.
Anyone know where or how to find out?Time to go and see how media and police are doing.
Most commenters here will doubtless recall that Labour were even more enthusiastic about curbing our civil rights than the late, unlamented Tory Government. The penny dropped for many that modern uni party government is about control, and I suspect that the many will not react well to new pandemic measures, created to enhance Pharma and the UN, or to measures introduced to curb the ‘pandemic’ of expressing one’s vehement disagreement and anxieties. The honeymoon has not gone well for twotierKeir.
Err I appreciate you may be easily panicked and influenced by on line drivel, but what law is the new Govt proposing in the recent Kings speech that covers your missive? Quote please.
Have a look at the WHO Pandemic Treaty and IHR Regs – enough people woke up to get the various nations not to sign the amendments this May 2024 but the direction of travel is the same and relentless – preparing for the next (manufactured) pandemic with vaccines/lockdowns/censorship and all under the control of a one world government supposedly under Tedros’ leadership…
The left is statist and inherently authoratarian. Anything threatening state control is to be neutralized and controlled.
—— is to be neutralised and controlled——-
and punished
Progressive elites want martial law.
What a surprise.
The metro middle class hate the working class
The revenge of the nerds
Public support for such a move?
I think not.
Sadly, this is not to be ruled out.
I suppose you, too, remember how many people supported lockdowns, masks, and mandatory vaccination, even after it became glaringly obvious that those do much more harm than good…
A certain segment of any society are inherently sheep and want to be herded by the authorities.
This is true. However, it is also important to take into account that the majority of people are conformists . For purely evolutionary reasons: conformism is necessary for survival
Heroes are those who are needed in exceptional circumstances only. And they are the first ones to die, usually young, without leaving offspring. Because nature doesn’t need too many heroes.
Sad as it is, that certain segment that you describe so precisely is rather big….
That is why my optimism would be rather qualified, although I hope to be proven wrong…
The situation they think they need to “get under control” has been going on for years. But they ignored it and now are reaping the consequences. Easy to blame it all on right wing thugs and not themselves. Their planned coercion will coerce them straight out of office.
What I find appalling is that this guy is a U.K. Government Adviser. Hopefully he will now be quickly removed for these crassly stupid comments.
Policing, ultimately, is a confidence trick. There will never be enough police if protestors act en masse because no municipality can afford what would be in effect a standing army. The law breakers have to believe that there are more police than there are, that they are incredibly resourced, very effective and that the consequences of disobeying the law are significant (and personal). When law breakers see police fleeing engagements in tatters, ignoring flagrant law breaking or insufficiently resourced to prevent protestors from going where they please, the confidence game is up. Moving to ‘COVID-style’ restrictions would be a disaster if those restrictions were simply ignored and it became obvious that the police couldn’t enforce them anyway. The next problem the government will face is that these types of engagements take a significant toll on police officers, either from direct injuries or mental health. Equipment too will break down or become unserviceable through damage. Hoping that law breakers simply ‘give it away’ or ‘peter out’ seems like wishful thinking.
From a marketing perspective, I couldn’t imagine a more terrible way to present the idea of imposing marshall law on your own citizens who appear to be protesting that their government isn’t upholding the law than this person is doing: threaten your citizens with more unjustified lockdowns and imply they are a disease… I’m an ocean away and know little specifics here other than the people in charge appear to love authoritarianism while accusing everybody else of the same thing.
martial
Yeah, sure; place everyone under house arrest.
Why not just address the core problem: the utter incompatibility of Islam with liberal democracy.
Mainstream Islam (never mind the radicals) is not interested in our separation of Church/Mosque and State, they are not even discussing it.
Muslim immigration should be stopped, completely, now.
It’s scary that people like this are actually allowed out on their own, let alone advising governments on public policy.