If the monarchy is part of British culture and tradition, respect for civil liberties such as peaceful assembly, demonstration and protest, police who do not abuse their power, stop first and ask questions later, and compassion for political asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their countries. But if the royalty has come out somewhat renewed from the acts of the coronation of Carlos III, the other factors in the equation have been deteriorating for some time. The country is not what it used to be.
Scotland Yard's heavy hand and "preemptive strike" on Republican militants even before the parade to Westminster Abbey began has been widely criticized by MPs, human rights organizations and a section of the press as "deeply anti-British". ” and a sign of the authoritarian drift of the Conservative Government, which after 13 years in power shows signs of deep exhaustion. On the eve of the coronation, he expedited a law that allows the police to arrest people for disturbing public order without any scandalous reason, just because they suspect that it is going to happen.
A total of 52 people were arrested on Saturday using these draconian powers. Among them, several Republic militants (including their leader, Graham Smith, who spent 16 hours in jail), at seven in the morning, three hours before the procession began, in front of the statue of the beheaded King Charles I. , on the pretext that they were carrying ropes and hooks with which they could have been tied to lampposts or columns and disturb the course of the ceremony. In reality, they say, it was to strengthen the banners they wanted to display with messages such as "Meghan, the people's princess", "He is not my king", "The parasite king" or "Let's privatize the Windsors". Also animalists and women with anti-rape alarms, "to prevent the noise from scaring the horses and having an altercation." "They clearly got out of hand," commented a Liberal Democrat deputy yesterday.
The justification of the police is that they had received intelligence data that "groups and individuals intended to cause trouble" and preferred to "act preemptively, taking into account that it was a once-in-a-generation event, with hundreds of thousands of people on the street, two hundred dignitaries and a global audience.”
The criticism of Saturday's arbitrary arrests adds to criticism of Scotland Yard in recent months for sexism, racism, abuse of power and excessive use of violence. To which must be added the new requirement to present an ID with a photo to vote and the Conservative Government's policy of considering immigrants who arrive by boat as criminals, denying them all rights and sending them to Rwanda.
The monarchy is not in danger, but civil rights are.
