What began with a series of protests in Epping, Essex, over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a recently arrived Ethiopian migrant, has now spread, as Brits air long-standing grievances about asylum seekers they have been forced to host in their own communities.
Demonstrations have so far been reported in Bournemouth, Southampton and Portsmouth, Norwich, Leeds and Wolverhampton, Sutton-in-Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, Altrincham and even at Canary Wharf in London. With years of unaddressed anger rapidly making itself felt, the police, pulled in all directions, are struggling to keep up. “Local commanders are once again being forced to choose between keeping the peace at home or plugging national gaps,” admits the head of the Police Federation.
Still, it seems there is one thing the Government is more than happy to devote resources to: trawling the internet for anti-migrant sentiment. The Telegraph reports that an elite team of police officers convened by the Home Office is set to monitor social media to flag up early signs of unrest. Working out of the National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in Westminster the new National Internet Intelligence Investigations team will “maximise social media intelligence” gathering in order to “help local forces manage public safety threats and risks”.
If this new division was just about intelligence-gathering that would be one thing. It’s true that social media is in invaluable resource for following events on the ground at such gatherings, while local Facebook groups are often where grassroots protests are organised.
Yet we know that when it comes to the British state and social media, censorship and punishment for online speech is never far behind. Ever since Sir Keir Starmer repeatedly linked the Southport unrest last year with social media, the idea has firmly taken root in Whitehall that the best way to stop unrest is to aggressively police the internet....<<<Read More>>>...