Political commentary

From Swing to Scarman

Ferdinand Mount

It was reported in Surrey that there was 'an extraordinary demand for county maps by foreigners'. A Norfolk magistrate told the Duke of Wellington that 'the tires are entirely occasioned by foreign influences'. Wherever threshing machines were being destroyed or haystacks set on fire, there were rumours that strangers had been seen travelling round the countryside in 'green gigs', distributing incendiary bullets, fireballs and other devilish devices.

The farm labourers who rioted in 1830 — the last great incendiary riots in England before Brixton — were put down with extreme severity. The mythical Captain Swing who issued such bloodcurdling threats to landlords in so many counties — how did the riots spread so fast? — was himself swung. Not a single person was killed in the riots themselves; yet of the nearly 2000 prisoners tried by 90 courts, 252 were sentenced to death (although only 19 executed) and 505 transported. By contrast, the few jail sentences imposed after the Brixton riots were mostly a matter of months.

There was of course no Lord Scarman in 1830. Yet the curious thing is that, although the governing classes were more overtly interested in punishing the rioters than in meeting the grievances of the agricultural labourers, things apparently did improve afterwards. A Wiltshire witness told the Select Committee on Agriculture of 1833: 'I am sure that more attention has been paid since that time to the comfort of the labourers.' Farm wages rose a little. Farmers were slow to replace their threshing machines. The Curate of Westwell, Kent, told the Poor Law Commission, 'And even now they say: Ah, them there riots and burnings did the poor a terrible deal of good'.

One riot is not unlike another: the rumours of agents provocateurs (whether on motorbikes or in green gig), the startling speed of imitation (with or without the aid of hysterical television bulletins), the mixture of genuine grievance and sheer excitement, (`They were enjoying themselves' — Lord Scarman), the argument within the governing class about the correct response, the alternation between dither and overkill, and, finally, often unacknowledged and involuntary, the concessions to the rioters.

The Conservative instinct is to go for suppression, pure, brutal and simple; if there are concessions to be made, let them trickle out slowly and furtively. Above all, there must be no sociological bosh which will tend to excuse persons who have committed criminal offences. 'High court judges', the Daily Telegraph said on Monday, 'are increasingly entrusted with burdens which should properly be carried by elected politicians.' Judges we are told, are qualified only to interpret law and fact, not to produce wide-ranging reports on social conditions.

But it is not the Scarmanising of a riot which leads to concessions to the rioters. Those come from an almost natural process of adjustment which will occur even under the most unbending government.

And Lord Scarman is fitted to carry out certain tasks which are unconnected with general questions of social improvement and which crop up after any riot, whether in 1830 or 1981. What is needed is an 'authority audit' which is as narrow and precise as a good accountant's report on a bad year for the company. And here Lord Scarman has done what he was asked — and rightly asked — to do.

Like any competent judge, he tells a good story. The narrative of the small but complex misunderstanding which started the Brixton riot is compelling. On the Friday night, P.C. Margiotta saw a black youth running down Atlantic Road, thought he was up to no good, grappled with him, the youth fell. He turned out to be wounded and bleeding. The crowd of young blacks thought the police were arresting him and not taking him to hospital. Within hours, there were half-a-dozen rumours running. Scarman has killed those rumours. Could any politician have done so?

Scarman's description of the police methods which gave rise to such misunderstandings is equally compelling. 'Operation Swamp' sounds even sillier than it did in the police evidence given to the enquiry. How can senior officers have seriously imagined that a purely temporary police 'army of occupation' stopping and searching likely muggers would make any permanent impact on street crime? It passes belief that the 'Home Beat Officers' — the modern version of the bobby on the beat — were not told anything about the operation.

Perhaps the most telling detail is chat there were no more than thirteen Home Beat Officers to cover the whole of Brixton — less than half the complement of one of the 'serials', the police mobile platoons which were called up in such huge numbers during the riots. Even when there was a lull in the rioting, on Saturday morning, nobody thought it worthwhile to call in the 'Hobby Bobbies' — the cruelly apt nickname.

Lord Scarman's analysis of West Indian mores and urban deprivation is indeed beta stuff. But this is primarily a report about the Metropolitan Police — ordered by the Home Secretary, their overlord, under the 1964 Police Act. Mr Whitelaw, it should be remembered is no slouch in terms of political advantage. And by framing the terms of reference as he did, he ensured that Lord Scarman had no alternative but to direct himself first and last to the maintenance of the Queen's Peace, and not to questions like who is to blame for unemployment and can the West Indians learn to love England and vice versa.

The failures of the police are not primarily failures in riot control. Scarman justly and prominently praises the courage and resourcefulness of police officers, both senior and junior, during the riots themselves. But he uses the identifiable failures in riot prevention to make a more general accusation.

The police, Scarman argues with feline cunning, are not just anti-black. They are increasingly in danger of becoming antipeople, a corps d'elite cut off from, suspicious of and rude to 'the public', with a growing sense of professional grievance and frustration.

The clamour to bring the police under some kind of regular scrutiny has spread beyond the Left. Scarman does not go so far as to suggest that the Brixton police should be under the control of Red Ted Knight. But he does modestly advocate that police stations should be open to inspection by some statutory body like the Boards of Visitors who visit H.M. Prisons and listen to prisoners' complaints. And why not?

The police are unlucky. They are the last victims of the 1960s, taught to believe in bigness, mechanisation, and bureaucracy. They have to bear the brunt of an historical moment which they did not create, just as the farmers whose ricks were burnt in the 1830s were themselves suffering from an agricultural slump which was none of their making.

The police ask: 'What are we to do about the rising tide of street crime? Have muggees, the majority of whom are white, no right to be protected against muggers, the majority of whom are black? Are the streets of Britain not to be policed equally? Are there to be no-go areas?' To which the answers are: first, the methods so far applied in Brixton do not appear to have been brilliantly successful; second, equal policing entails consistent policing. If footpad crime can be combatted only by foot patrols, then those foot patrols must be regular and familiar.

Consider the statistics of Operation Swamp. During the week before the riots, 943 people were stopped and searched, 118 people were arrested, 75 charges made. The result would seem to be 43 people wronglY arrested and 800 indignant citizens frisked — which appears to add up to one riot.

A year before the Swing riots, Sir Robert Peel issued instructions to the Metropolitan Police — which new recruits to this day are obliged to learn by heart: 'The constable will be civil and obliging to all people of every rank and class . . .

'In the novelty of the present establishment, particular care is to be taken that the constables of the police do not form false notions of their duties and powers . .

I don't think there is much to be added.