beyondclicktivism

(Tony Parsons on twitter via @djhanks)

Not many people would proudly laugh in public at news that an innocent man has had his home burned down. Like too many swept up in the atmosphere of mob justice in the wake of the riots, Tony Parsons has clearly forgotten that people are innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, he is not alone in this reaction.

Dane Williamson has now been cleared after nine harrowing days in custody during which everything he owned was lost in the fire at his home that caused Parsons such delight.

Initially police said it was arson; later they changed their mind. If it was arson then their decision to publish his address on twitter deserves investigation. Such details are always matters of public record when someone is charged – but what is new is the wilful broadcasting by the police force of this information via social media. Given the gloating tone with which they announced sentencing details, there are grounds to suggest that their behaviour may have contributed to an atmosphere in which people might decide to take the law into their own hands.

If our justice system is handing down sentences for Facebook comments inciting riot then staff working for @GMPolice should be facing serious questions too.

This is not the first time we’ve seen the police making questionable use of twitter. The 26 March protests saw unsubstantiated accusations of anarchists throwing light bulbs full of ammonia at the police, a detail that was picked up without question by the world’s media (Reuters being perhaps the sole organisation who saw fit to qualify it with the word “alleged”). Without doubt, this is now an established fact in most people’s minds. After all the police would never lie…

I have created the following e-petition on the government website which is still waiting for approval before it will appear.

We ask that the police be banned from using social media to make statements to the public.

The police have a position of authority which makes their sometimes irresponsible use of social media dangerous and likely to prejudice justice.

Unsubstantiated accusations of criminality or tweets about justice being served are undignified and inflammatory and should have no place in official statements by the police force.

There is no justification for the time and money spent paying staff to update twitter. Given the harm it causes, we ask that the police be banned from using social media for public relations so that their resources can be put to better use.

This is not an issue of free speech. The concept of free speech has never allowed for reckless and malicious speech that puts lives at risk.  There are always restrictions in place as to what journalists may write about someone accused of a crime. These restrictions are the result of hundreds of years of progress towards a more just and equitable society.

Tony Parsons is entitled to his opinions, however unpleasant. He is a private individual. He is free to tweet all he likes about “softies” decrying tough sentencing. I don’t like his attitude but I completely understand his outrage and horror at scenes of violence – I just don’t believe we can afford to suspend democracy and justice no matter how angry we may feel.

When the police tweet out a statement, however, they are not speaking as individuals but are representing the state and the legal system. In using twitter to pass judgements explicitly or implicitly they are overstepping their role and engaging in populist politics in a way that is clearly not in the public interest. Limiting the way the police use twitter is a necessary restriction to be added to the justice system. We cannot afford to let mob justice prevail.

[Update: This is how GM Police responded to the news of Dane Williamson's release:

Both the tone of this brief statement and the decision to single him out like this for comment are highly inappropriate.]

Above a certain level, it is not the wealth of a society that determines how well it functions, it is how equally that wealth is shared.

In The Spirit Level, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson demonstrate that health and social problems are worse in more unequal societies. Among other indexes, infant mortality, murder rates, teenage pregnancies, levels of obesity, depression, drug and alcohol addiction are all higher in countries where inequality is more pronounced. Details of their research can be found at The Equality Trust.

Poverty is relative. To some that may seem facile: if you can afford a Blackberry, then you’re not poor, they’ll argue. But the facts speak differently. Whether one thinks it makes sense or not, the experience of poverty only makes sense relative to the population in which you live and the effects of relative poverty are the same whether or not the poor have designer goods.

Whatever the reasons, the more unequal a society, the worse its problems.

While these problems disproportionately affect the poorest in society, their incidence is also greater in the rich in societies with the greatest gap between rich and poor. Inequality does not help anyone and this is without considering the impact of civil unrest and rioting.

Acceptance of the theories have tended to fit along party lines. Since they accord with broadly left thinking, clearly  Conservatives are going to resist them.  Last week while most politicians were asking questions about how the riots had occurred, the Chancellor George Osborne was busy furthering his campaign to cut the tax rate for the richest in society.  Encouraging the right to pay higher wages to workers is unlikely to appeal. Labour, however, may also have to rethink the fact that they have become intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.

Most of us know from experience that trickle down wealth is a lie because it ignores the trickle down poverty caused by the ability of some to pay more that pushes up the price for all of food and shelter and transport.

A rising tide may lift all boats but most of us will never own one. We are cockle pickers trapped on the beach by rising waters.

The Spirit Level suggests that this may be bad news even for those with yachts.

When the prospect of asking affluent tax avoiders to pay their fair share is raised the defenders of inequality suggest that the rich might leave the country if they were expected to contribute like everyone else. But if whatever advantage they add as “wealth creators” is outweighed by the problems they create by heightening inequality, then maybe this might not be such a bad thing. Perhaps it is time to call their bluff?

With a broad consensus now that the moral failure of Britain’s elites cannot be separated from the immoral behaviour of looters, it seems a good time to ask whether these broken social values may not in part be linked to inequality and to start looking for ways of building a society in which all can prosper not just a few.

By Tim Hardy

This is mob justice and it has to stop.

People are angry, frightened, confused – it is not surprising that strong, authoritarian gestures seem appealing.

Whatever one thinks of the British police – a subject to which I will return – you cannot deny that as people they have been under unimaginable pressure in recent days, working in frightening and dangerous circumstances. It is perfectly understandable that individual officers will feel triumphant when another person is sentenced. But this does not excuse the crowing tone of such messages. This is neither professional nor reassuring. Quite the opposite. This has the air of a lynch mob.

There is no excuse for the violence of recent events that have left five dead and over a hundred families homeless and brought terror to our streets. That goes without saying. Those attempting to understand it are not condoning it nor are those who are concerned that it is being used to excuse dangerously anti-democratic responses.

The Prime Minister is reported to be impressed by the swift sentencing of all-night courts and asking why justice cannot always be served so quickly. The answer is simple: this is not justice.

Sentencing has been uniformly harsh. One person sentenced to 10 weeks in prison for swearing at police officers,  another to four months in youth custody for ranting and swearing, another to six months in prison for stealing £3.50 worth of mineral water a sentence calmer minds have judged ”expensive and unnecessary”. These are sentences that no reasonable person, whatever their politics, however angry and fearful, could ever regard as just.

While the coalition threaten an end to human rights as though the fundamentals of our civil society were just so much administrative red tape getting in the way, the police have been busy in the media painting the demands for justice over the killing of Ian Tomlinson as a form of perverse political correctness holding them back. In effect, they are demanding that they be allowed to be above the law.

There are already reports of legal observers being beaten up by police. Footage from Manchester appears to show police forgetting their training and overstepping the mark. However much some may want to understand and pardon such behaviour, we cannot forget that the spark that ignited the original rioting was the death of another young black man at police hands and that the first instinct of the IPCC was yet again to lie to the press about the incident in a pattern that is wearily familiar.

Given that the police clearly lost control of the streets, it is understandable that many might think they need greater powers and to use more extreme measures.

Given that the police have routinely abused their existing powers, it is understandable that many might be frightened by this.

The IPCC are not fit for purpose. Nobody is watching the police.

The recent phone hacking scandal has exposed alarming links between corrupt police officers, a corrupt press and corrupt politicians all of whom look after one another in a freemasonry of vested interests. We live in dangerous times lorded over by a feral elite where the moral decay of society is as bad at the top as it is at the bottom. We have a socialism of the rich that demands the poorest and most vulnerable in society pay for the folly and greed of the most wealthy while rabid neo-liberals use a crisis of their own making to further their own poisonous agenda.

Like looters taking advantage of fear and anger on the streets, David Cameron and his housing minister Grant Shapps are eagerly supporting the eviction of families of those who have participated in the riots.

Even if you genuinely believe that this is somehow going to make parents more responsible for their children, if you punish an entire family, you’re also punishing blameless siblings too. That is unacceptable.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Gandhi said, and this is an even more brutal form of vengeance than that.

If you cannot see what is wrong with collective punishment of families then there is something profoundly wrong with your moral compass.

I’d rather see our society grow stronger from this, not more fragmented. It is a fundamental tenet of justice that people should be punished proportionally. To fix the damage to our society – a damage that predates the riots – those who are found guilty should be made to do community service so that they learn the value of respecting their neighbourhoods rather than sent to our already over-crowded jails.

Was there anyone who failed to be moved when the Norwegian Prime Minister responded to the actions of Anders Breivik by calling for more humanity and more understanding?

However revolting their actions, those who looted and burned are as much our young people as those who were the victims.

We cannot replace one opportunist mob with another. This needs to be a time for calm and compassion, for conversation and questioning. Neither the right nor the left can afford to let themselves be blinded by prejudice and anger. Our instinctive responses are inadequate. History is full of dark warnings of what happens when a broken society attempts to use brute force rather than understanding to enforce stability and cohesion.

[Update: Greater Manchester Police have subsequently deleted their tweet and apologised for it, stating "Thanks to all for feedback messages - all your comments have been noted. You are right, it is not our place to comment on sentences."]

[Update: 19 August 2011:

"Ursula Nevin did not go into Manchester city centre," [Judge Andrew Gilbart QC] said. “We regard it as wrong in principle that she was subject to a custodial sentence.
“She must pay some sentence because she knew where the goods had come from.
“Seventy-five hours of unpaid work appears to be the appropriate figure bearing in mind the guilty plea.”

Judge Andrew Gilbart as he over-ruled the sentence.]

By Tim Hardy

On Christmas Eve in 1913 in Calumet, Michigan at a crowded party for striking mine workers and their families, seventy-three people were trampled to death in a panicked rush for the exits when someone shouted “Fire!”. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. There was no fire.

Woody Guthrie’s song “1913 Massacre” blames the event on strike-breaking thugs hired by the mines and it is a dramatic illustration on the necessary limits free societies place on free speech. Reckless and malicious speech – popularly described as “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre” – is not a protected or guaranteed right.

David Cameron’s comments about social media have led to hysterical headlines in the Independent and elsewhere claiming that the UK government will try to shut down social media.

This will never happen.

Technically, politically, economically it is impossible.

Technically, it is impossible. Those who want to use communications networks to cause trouble will find ways around the censor – as will many who want to use it for good – but the danger is that those who desperately want to know if their families and friends are safe will be left in the dark, creating more fear and uncertainty at times of unrest and tempting them to make potentially dangerous journeys rather than stay safe indoors.

Politically, it is impossible. Those who used social networks to share vital information when press and police were absent will not stand for a government that tries to close their only avenue of communication. Nor will those who used the technology to squash false rumours and to bring help to those who needed it as well as to organise clean-ups and donation drives for individuals and communities devastated by events. Nor will the brave journalists who used social media to crowd-source intelligence so that they could report on what was happening around the country.

Economically it would be a disaster. Business would not stand for it. Britain prides itself on its creative industries and – leaving aside debates about copyright infringement – these are industries that can only flourish where speech is not censored. The City will never accept a state that would be willing to shut down the Blackberry network in the middle of the trading day because trouble was kicking off down the road in Hackney.

To consider shutting down social networks because one person might shout “fire!” is as willfully ignorant and dangerous as suggesting that after someone shouts “fire!” in a crowded theatre we should switch off all the lights.

David Cameron may have shown extremely poor judgement over the last week but even he is not that stupid.