Tom Goodhale is a Londoner with more than a decade’s experience in and around law, policy and regulation.
When is a riot not a riot, and why are we becoming increasingly used to hearing the word “disorder” from the police instead?
July has given us plenty of examples of public “disorder” after large crowds of people gathered in the streets intent on causing mayhem, following various incidents of public note such as the man whose head was kicked and stamped on by police at Manchester Airport, or the riots that broke out after a number of children were stabbed to death in Stockport.
While many have criticised police forces for being slow to respond, or pointed to social media footage showing constables retreating from violent mobs as police vans being set alight, there is a specific reason we don’t hear forces referring to these incidents as riots.
It is because of financial liability: if police admit that a riot took place on their watch, the local force becomes legally liable for the cleanup costs.
In bygone days a riot was defined as 12 or more people who were “unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together”, in the words of the Riot Act 1714. Rioters who ignored the time-honoured “reading of the Riot Act” had an hour to disperse, or faced a variety of punishments, up to and including the gallows.
Modern-day police responses to outbreaks of group violence have ranged from weighing in with public order weapons and equipment to retreating from hotspots of “disorder” and leaving them to simmer down of their own accord.
A cynic might suggest that the police focus on using the word “disorder” is intended to evade their legal liability; shirking their duty to reimburse the community for the damage caused to homes, shops, and businesses when police officers surrender control of the streets to rampaging mobs.
Others might say that despite the growth in police budgets for the last nine consecutive years to today’s £17.2bn, chief constables have enough competing priorities without paying out millions of pounds in compensation, effectively rewarding mutinous municipalities for ignoring the law of the land.
Whichever side you come down on, the sums of money involved in riot compensation are far from trifling. Greater Manchester Police alone was on the hook for more than £9m as a result of the nationwide “disorder” in August 2011, according to a parliamentary exchange, while the Mayor of London’s Office was similarly threatened with a £100m bill.
While doubtless some on the right of the Tory party would welcome a return to the pre-Dickensian days of the Riot Act and death sentences for rioters, what is of greater interest today is how the Victorians made the police directly liable for losing control of the streets – and how the lessons of those bygone days might be useful in addressing today’s burglary epidemic.
The Riot (Damages) Act 1886 was passed in the wake of riots in Trafalgar Square the previous year after the Social Democratic Federation, one of Britain’s first openly Marxist political groups, organised a thousands-strong demonstration demanding a legally-binding right to work.
Predictably, this degenerated into 5,000 unemployed socialists running around Pall Mall and Oxford Street while “smashing windows and looting shops”, according to Dr Andrzej Diniejko’s potted history of the party.
Under the Act, and its modern successor from 2016, police must pay compensation to people whose property is damaged in a riot. Despite the public sector baulking at the costs of the nationwide riots in August 2011, a review by Neil Kinghan two years later recommended that “the principle of police accountability for riot damage should be retained in new legislation”, which it duly was.
The effects of that recommendation can be seen today in the way that police constantly refer to disorders rather than riot, suggesting that it has worked – even if the most visible effect is for police to downplay riots when they happen.
If police were made financially liable for the cost of replacing items stolen in burglaries, or robberies, we might see not only a fall in incidents but a rise in public confidence in the police as new incentives to tackle crime make themselves felt.
Currently, confidence in the police is at its lowest level since 2017. Just over half – 53 per cent – of the public is either indifferent or negative towards the police, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
Financial liability for ignoring some socially harmful crimes is a model that could usefully be extended to the likes of burglary. In the year to June 2023 alone there were 1.5 million “neighbourhood crime” incidents according to the Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey for England and Wales; neighbourhood crime includes burglary, car theft, and robbery.
Putting in place strong incentives to tackle burglaries, robberies and thefts, in a way that police chiefs cannot ignore for fear of losing budgets, could go a long way to reducing crimes that directly affect millions around the country today.
Tom Goodhale is a Londoner with more than a decade’s experience in and around law, policy and regulation.
When is a riot not a riot, and why are we becoming increasingly used to hearing the word “disorder” from the police instead?
July has given us plenty of examples of public “disorder” after large crowds of people gathered in the streets intent on causing mayhem, following various incidents of public note such as the man whose head was kicked and stamped on by police at Manchester Airport, or the riots that broke out after a number of children were stabbed to death in Stockport.
While many have criticised police forces for being slow to respond, or pointed to social media footage showing constables retreating from violent mobs as police vans being set alight, there is a specific reason we don’t hear forces referring to these incidents as riots.
It is because of financial liability: if police admit that a riot took place on their watch, the local force becomes legally liable for the cleanup costs.
In bygone days a riot was defined as 12 or more people who were “unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together”, in the words of the Riot Act 1714. Rioters who ignored the time-honoured “reading of the Riot Act” had an hour to disperse, or faced a variety of punishments, up to and including the gallows.
Modern-day police responses to outbreaks of group violence have ranged from weighing in with public order weapons and equipment to retreating from hotspots of “disorder” and leaving them to simmer down of their own accord.
A cynic might suggest that the police focus on using the word “disorder” is intended to evade their legal liability; shirking their duty to reimburse the community for the damage caused to homes, shops, and businesses when police officers surrender control of the streets to rampaging mobs.
Others might say that despite the growth in police budgets for the last nine consecutive years to today’s £17.2bn, chief constables have enough competing priorities without paying out millions of pounds in compensation, effectively rewarding mutinous municipalities for ignoring the law of the land.
Whichever side you come down on, the sums of money involved in riot compensation are far from trifling. Greater Manchester Police alone was on the hook for more than £9m as a result of the nationwide “disorder” in August 2011, according to a parliamentary exchange, while the Mayor of London’s Office was similarly threatened with a £100m bill.
While doubtless some on the right of the Tory party would welcome a return to the pre-Dickensian days of the Riot Act and death sentences for rioters, what is of greater interest today is how the Victorians made the police directly liable for losing control of the streets – and how the lessons of those bygone days might be useful in addressing today’s burglary epidemic.
The Riot (Damages) Act 1886 was passed in the wake of riots in Trafalgar Square the previous year after the Social Democratic Federation, one of Britain’s first openly Marxist political groups, organised a thousands-strong demonstration demanding a legally-binding right to work.
Predictably, this degenerated into 5,000 unemployed socialists running around Pall Mall and Oxford Street while “smashing windows and looting shops”, according to Dr Andrzej Diniejko’s potted history of the party.
Under the Act, and its modern successor from 2016, police must pay compensation to people whose property is damaged in a riot. Despite the public sector baulking at the costs of the nationwide riots in August 2011, a review by Neil Kinghan two years later recommended that “the principle of police accountability for riot damage should be retained in new legislation”, which it duly was.
The effects of that recommendation can be seen today in the way that police constantly refer to disorders rather than riot, suggesting that it has worked – even if the most visible effect is for police to downplay riots when they happen.
If police were made financially liable for the cost of replacing items stolen in burglaries, or robberies, we might see not only a fall in incidents but a rise in public confidence in the police as new incentives to tackle crime make themselves felt.
Currently, confidence in the police is at its lowest level since 2017. Just over half – 53 per cent – of the public is either indifferent or negative towards the police, according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
Financial liability for ignoring some socially harmful crimes is a model that could usefully be extended to the likes of burglary. In the year to June 2023 alone there were 1.5 million “neighbourhood crime” incidents according to the Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey for England and Wales; neighbourhood crime includes burglary, car theft, and robbery.
Putting in place strong incentives to tackle burglaries, robberies and thefts, in a way that police chiefs cannot ignore for fear of losing budgets, could go a long way to reducing crimes that directly affect millions around the country today.