Cut to the Quick

There is a cruel joke doing the rounds at the moment based on the question "What's the difference between Bob Quick and Josef Fritzl?" The answer being, at least Fritzl remembered his binder. But, in truth, the resignation of Bob Quick, senior anti-terror plod of plods, is no joke, and should really be a matter of concern for us all, or at least, the manner in which it was engineered and executed should.

The bald facts of the case appear to be that he was snapped by a photo-journalist with a long-lens camera as he emerged from a car outside Number 10, where he was due to address a meeting of "Cobra", the rather melodramatically-named Government emergency committee. (You just know, don't you, that the name of that committee was thought up by a middle aged man with an Aston Martin and a James Bond fetish). The subject of his address was "Operation Pathway", not as you might first think, a crackdown on rogue landscape gardeners, but in fact a joint police/MI5 operation against a suspected Al Q'aida terror cell, who were planning some kind of major outrage in the North West.

So far, so predictable. Unfortunately, and rather absent-mindedly, in my view, Mr Quick had a sheaf of papers under his arm, in plain view, which, when the photographers' snaps were downloaded, gave the full S. P. on "Operation Pathway", including names, dates, and addresses. Cue a massed panic in the upper echelons of the security services, bringing forward the operation by 12 hours, and cue, eventually, also, the resignation of Mr Quick.

We don't know, of course, all of the machinations behind the scenes, which went on overnight, before Boris Johnson of all people popped up on the Today programme the next morning and cheerfully but "regretfully" (his own word) blew the embargo agreed by various parties over the official announcement of Quick's departure, no doubt then going home to crack open a "regretful" bottle of bubbly and let off a few "regretful" celebratory fireworks!

Somehow, anyway, overnight, it seemed to have been decided that Bob Quick's position had become "untenable", although previously, both Caroline Flint and Hazel Blears, both ministers of the Crown, on separate occasions, had been photographed carrying similar sensitive briefing papers into Downing Street, yet had escaped the chop. And, of course, the people to whom Bob Quick tendered his resignation have one or two pressing matters of their own to attend to, regarding second homes and expenses, that might well result in them discovering that, with resignations, as with so much else in life, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Time will tell, but the supreme irony of course is Boris Johnson, of all people, receiving the resignation of anyone for incompetence. That really is irony beginning to eat itself, tail-first. like those mythical heraldic sea-serpents that used to illuminate the margins of medieval seafarers' maps.

The conspiracy theorists have already been hard at work since Mr Quick's unfortunate career demise. The wackiest theory I have seen so far is that he engineered his own downfall and dismissal, in preparation for some as yet undisclosed secret mission under deep cover, still working to undermine an unsuspecting Al Q'aida, from some nameless bunker deep under Whitehall. Others have extended and built on this theory to say that the whole plot was manufactured by the security services, to keep us cowed and paranoid. That, I mus admit, I actually find slightly more believable, given the propensity of the anti-terror police to swoop down and arrest people with the maximum publicity and alarum, only to release them again, very quietly, and without comment, a few weeks later. As to Al Q'aida being wrong-footed, I doubt they care on speck of bat-crap who is in charge. As I have said before, these are the people who put the "mentalist" into "fundamentalist" and they are all mad as a runaway pram full of burning poodles.

But Mr Quick probably had enemies nearer home that he should have been worried about, other than the Clitheroe Branch of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade. An even more extremist hotbed of loonies and zealots - The Conservative Party, since it was he who organised the arrest of Shadow Home Secretary Damian Green, inside the House of Commons, for "grooming the mole!" This was probably what underlay Boris Johnson's gleeful (I'm sorry, that should of course read "regretful") hooting on the morning of the resignation itself.

It is a sad day, though, coming back to why we should all be concerned, when a senior police officer can be so easily be forced out of his job, by a combination of political and media pressure, for what seems to be a relatively minor cock-up, one caused probably by a combination of absent-mindedness and the pressures and stress of work. It doesn't bode well for the checks and balances of the English legal system generally, and the separation of the powers, and all those other liberties and rights that lie locked up in those rows of dusty tomes and law books that it seems no one will acknowledge until it's too late.

Apart from anything else, I understand that it's now an offence under certain circumstances to photograph a police officerin the course of his duties. And photographing, and subsequently publishing, a document clearly marked "secret" surely contravened the Official Secrets Act. Much as I am amazed to find myself painted into a corner where I find myself defending the police against the media, and much as I violently disagree with the law against police photography on principle, nevertheless if it is the law, it should be applied universally across the land, without fear or favour, and not selectively, and therefore I look forward to the rule of law being upheld and the photographers being arrested and charged at least under the O.S.A.

This was not the only example of course, of laws being selectively or inappropriately applied over recent days. The arrests which the police carried out in Exeter, of protestors against the G20 Summit, immediately before that unhappy event, were carried out under the Anti-Terror legislation. I have previously said that, once the web of restrictive and anti-libertarian anti-terror laws is in place, there is nothing to stop the Government of the day using it against any sort of perceived threat, and potentially to stifle any legitimate protest, and it looks like I was right. There are plenty of existing laws about unathorised use of fireworks.

I was originally going to write more about that aspect of the G20, but it is now overshadowed by another episode where the police did not emerge very photogenically, the sad death of Iam Tomlinson at the G20 demo in central London. I don't think it is a good idea to write at length on this, actually, for various reasons. I have no medical training, but even if I were a cardiac surgeon, I am not skilled in the art of long distance internet autopsy. In short, I don't know if Ian Tomlinson's heart would have stopped beating when it did anyway. The most you can say, until the professionals pronounce on it, is that probably being whacked with a baton and thrown to the ground while under stress anyway (because it seemed he couldn't get home owing to the road to his hostel being blocked off) wouldn't have helped matters.

The complete lack of long distance fully-clothed-autopsy skills hasn't stopped people jumping in with both feet and blaming the police for Mr Tomlinson's death, though, especially since the appearance of film clips on the internet that would seem to confirm him at the receiving end of police brutality. This, of course, is the flip side of the "surveillance society", that nowadays we live in such a goldfish bowl, such a bubble of Youtube and mobile phone clips and rolling news, that it is just as easy for us to film the police, as vice-versa.

As it stands, under this new law which I mentioned earlier, the one aiming to prevent people from photograhing the police, the person who shot the Tomlinson footage should also be prosecuted. Yet in this case, the footage would seem to be clearly in the public interest, in establishing the facts, or indeed maybe even in establishing that the policeman actually had a good reason for treating Mr Tomlinson that way, should that ultimately prove to be the case. Any law which so clearly fails on two such widely diverse cases cannot be anything but a hinderance to justice, in the long run.

In the case of Mr Tomlinson, there are obviously enquiries to be made, a due process to be run, and conclusions to be arraived at in the end. It is important not to prejudice this process, but I will say just this: I hope that any enquiry looks also into the wider issues surrounding the cause of Mr Tomlinson's death.

It was an insane (and very costly) decision to hold the G20 meeting in central London, the more so since the various anarchists and other rentamob agitprop merchants who turn up and cause trouble at all peaceful demos, made it clear they were going to mount a major effort. The media were flagging it up for days in advance that there was going to be trouble, going to be a rumble. And as a result, the police themselves were obviously "pumped up" and "up for it". We always seem to be able to find hundred of extra police for events such as this, as well, and we have to wonder about their level of training and skill to deal with such situations. [As a sidebar, I also find myself reflecting if the next G20 summit could possibly be held in my driveway, so that the unprecedented police presence might just deter those scallies who nicked my car radio, from having another go.]

In short, the G20 was a policing accident waiting to happen, inept in conception, and fired up by the media's self-fulfilling prophecy of looting, anarchy and violence. Speaking as someone who remembers the death of Blair Peach at the hands of the SPG in 1979, I find myself reflecting sadly that little seems to have changed. It is no consolation whasoever for Ian Tomlinson, or his family, but maybe we were lucky to get away with just the one fatality.

We may not be so lucky next time.
.