by Sean Gabb
I suppose I should make some comment on last night’s rioting in Tottenham.
Thirty years ago, when we had all those “inner-city” riots, I sided automatically with the police. These were doing their job of maintaining law and order. The rioters were various kinds of scum who deserved a good kicking. After three decades of watching the progressive moral degradation of the police – to the point where almost no one looks oddly at me when I call them the pigs – I don’t feel the slightest sympathy for those shifty, rat-faced goons in blue. My own dealings with them have been confined to a few brushes with el Porco Trafico. Extrapolating from these, and bearing in mind what my friends tell me, and what I read in the newspapers, I do feel much sympathy for the blacks of Tottenham.
That being said, a decent government would have put down the riots with lethal force and kept the streets safe for the respectable classes. But if you suspect that I can’t work out if I hate rioters or the police more, you aren’t far off the mark.
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