Riot
police are bracing themselves for a "summer of rage" with middle-class
victims of the recession joining activists to besiege the headquarters
of financial institutions.
[telegraph.co.uk] Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan Police’s
public order branch, said that he feared there could be "mass protest"
at rising unemployment and the downturn in the economy.
The
officer added that banks, particularly those that still pay large
bonuses despite receiving billions of aid from the taxpayer, had also
become "viable targets" for protesters.
Mr Hartshorn, who is
regularly briefed on potential causes of civil unrest, said that "known
activists" were planning returns to the streets, and intelligence
revealed that they may be able to call on more protesters than normal
due to the unprecedented conditions.
He said: "Those people would
be good at motivating people, but they haven’t had the ‚foot soldiers‘
to actually carry out (protests).
"Obviously the downturn in the
economy, unemployment, repossessions, changes that. Suddenly there is
the opportunity for people to mass protest."
Other parts of Europe have already seen large-scale protests against the handling of the economy.
Up
to 120,000 people marched through Dublin on Saturday in an emotional
and angry national demonstration over the Irish Government’s handling
of the economic crisis.
In the UK earlier this month, hundreds of
oil refinery and power station workers carried out a series of wildcat
strikes over the use of foreign workers.
And across the Channel in France, a million people joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs.
Mr
Hartshorn, who is regularly briefed on potential causes of civil
unrest, singled out April’s G20 summit of the leading developed nations
in London as one of the events that could kick start a series of
protests.
"We’ve got G20 coming and I think that is being
advertised on some of the sites as the highlight of what they see as a
’summer of rage‘," he said.
