alt Hacker NewsPresumably the 2011 riots: a college student with no criminal record was jailed for six months for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water [0]
Or perhaps our current Home Sec in 2014 declaring "Rioters face years in prison as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promises ‘swift justice’" [1]
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London...
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/riots-prison-justice-l...
It's all part of making effective protesting illegal. You can justify each little step as you clutch your pearls (even me, to an extent if I don't think of the bigger picture), but then when you realise that the sum of all that is permitted is standing alone creating no disturbance for anyone, effecting no change, and you realise effective protesting is banned.
Those riots in 2011 were not protest in any meaningful way. I was in London at the time, it was a bunch of people stealing shit and setting fires because they thought they could. What was shocking was how hands-off the police were when they routinely kettle and arrest peaceful protestors. When confronted with people who were actually looting and burning stuff down, they were nowhere to be seen.
And the second article is about people setting fire to cars and buildings.
This is not “effective protest”, it’s criminal damage and arson and would be prosecuted as such in any western nation.
Are you seriously arguing you should be able to get away with setting fire to a community library because you reckon you’ve got a legit grievance?
Yeah nah, no thanks.