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Well, how soon can we see someone say? "Off with their heads!" While leading a mob of thousands...
A summer of discontent? It seems a real possibility. Senior officers in the Met are worried. Of course, there are always groups which want to stir up disorder on the slightest excuse or none.
The question in these deeply depressed times is how many people who would normally stay aloof might feel like joining them?
It is difficult to think of a time when so many people of so many ages at so many levels of society have cause to be fed up and fearful for their futures.
They range from the unemployed to savers who have seen their investments, principally for old age, brutally devalued in the stock markets. There are those who have lost their homes after being lured into excessive mortgages.
There are students, many of whom were not qualified for higher education, who are being told that the jobs market is never likely to offer them serious employment.
Add to this - as the police fear - a number of single issues such as Heathrow, or power stations alleged to cause global warming, or the business preference for immigrant workers, or events in the Middle East.
Do the sums and you come up with a powerful cocktail which differs from previous periods of anger and dissent - because there is so much middle-class anger in it. The normally staid who would not join protests may do so now.
A desire to protest is a common feature of adolescence and has regularly led to silly disturbances in the past. This time, the danger is that parents may feel like joining in.
The situation is made worse by the fact that the Government, whatever confident attitudes it may strike in public, is plainly fumbling in its efforts to prevent a long-term economic depression.
Comparisons with the past can be useful - or misleading. The Met thinks back to disturbances in the Eighties. Many of these were, in fact, little more than local looting. But that, too, could reappear under a general air of 'political' protest.
...
The question in these deeply depressed times is how many people who would normally stay aloof might feel like joining them?
It is difficult to think of a time when so many people of so many ages at so many levels of society have cause to be fed up and fearful for their futures.
They range from the unemployed to savers who have seen their investments, principally for old age, brutally devalued in the stock markets. There are those who have lost their homes after being lured into excessive mortgages.
There are students, many of whom were not qualified for higher education, who are being told that the jobs market is never likely to offer them serious employment.
Add to this - as the police fear - a number of single issues such as Heathrow, or power stations alleged to cause global warming, or the business preference for immigrant workers, or events in the Middle East.
Do the sums and you come up with a powerful cocktail which differs from previous periods of anger and dissent - because there is so much middle-class anger in it. The normally staid who would not join protests may do so now.
A desire to protest is a common feature of adolescence and has regularly led to silly disturbances in the past. This time, the danger is that parents may feel like joining in.
The situation is made worse by the fact that the Government, whatever confident attitudes it may strike in public, is plainly fumbling in its efforts to prevent a long-term economic depression.
Comparisons with the past can be useful - or misleading. The Met thinks back to disturbances in the Eighties. Many of these were, in fact, little more than local looting. But that, too, could reappear under a general air of 'political' protest.
...
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