Policing methods

There are reports that some people involved in the administration of local police forces in the United States. feel that the prevailing strategy for keeping the peace is wrong. They are said to be looking abroad for ideas. They could start by following Canada and restrict the use of lethal weapons. Then they could consult Britain's Clifford Stott, who in the last in this season's Life Scientific programmes, explained to Jim al-Khalili how crowd trouble can be defused before it even starts.

My recollection is that policing in England and Wales in the 1950s was done largely by consent. Moreover, police prevented crowds building up in the first place. Of course, there was the right numbers of officers then to maintain such policies. At some time, the strategy changed so that in the capital at least we looked more like the French - a show of force by officers in riot gear behind shields. If, heeding the research by Professor Stott, the Met. at least change their strategy, a long hot summer may not see the crowd violence that such weather has engendered in the past.

But what are we to make of Maxine Peake, and, as a consequence, Rebecca Long-Bailey? Peake is an excellent actress and one who has admirably made the case for the North of England. However, she should have been intelligent enough not to stray out of her areas of expertise in passing on some ill-founded speculation:
US police learnt the practice of kneeling on people’s necks “from seminars with Israeli secret services”.

My first reaction to this was that, in the unlikely event that it occurred, it was more likely that the exchange of techniques was the other way round. Of course, this view is coloured by my recollection of extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques from the days of a complaisant G.W. Bush. There are credible reports that the CIA trained the secret police of America's allies in the Middle East, including those of the Shah. It also seems unlikely that the many US police authorities - which have a great deal of local autonomy, it should be remembered - would take lessons from those of a foreign power when there was expertise within the States.

Besides, phrases such as "kneeling on the neck" or "putting feet on the neck" go back a long way. In recent years, women's liberation has used the phraseology. It does have a biblical ring, and sure enough there is in the Old Testament:
Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings … for thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against whom ye fight. (Joshua 10:24-25)

It is arguable that the allegation is not in itself anti-Semitic (try substituting "French" for "Israeli" and it makes as much sense), but the biblical overtones and the context of a Labour Party trying to shake off an aura of Antisemitism make it so. If Ms Peake was foolish in Tweeting it, Ms Long-Bailey was doubly so, knowing that her new leader would leap on any slip to rid himself of a prominent Corbynista, and one who contested his leadership.