London riots just ain't what they used to be

Click here for more Evening Standard columnists

Today is the day of the vote. Yesterday was the day of the mob. I just hope the day of the vote gets a better turnout. Each year I dutifully don mufti and head for the promised May Day riot. Two years ago I went to the City to witness the death throes of global capitalism. Last year I was in Oxford Circus as the Metropolitan Police saved world consumerism by imprisoning passers-by for six hours in the street. Yesterday I joined Squidge, Smudge, Swampy and Stinky and headed for Mayfair and the idle rich.

The idle rich had taken the day off, as had the Smudges and Stinkies. I know the police always find it hard to predict a collective threat to law and order, but London was in a state of ridiculous panic. It was a city as redesigned by insurance assessors and the Health and Safety Executive. "Would sir like an indoor seat or would he prefer to take his life in his hands by the window?"

There were police everywhere. The Ritz was defying world Marxism with tasteful blue shutters. Bond Street cowered as if awaiting the entire Millwall supporters' club. White's, that most traditional of gentlemen's clubs, looked like a building site. Hoardings and flickering tape decked every street.

Who, I wonder, could summon up 6,000 police officers in riot gear to protect the plate-glass windows of Mayfair? Half of London lives in nightly fear of mugging and burglary, yet they get no armoured paddy wagons in their streets.

Even the buses had stopped. Roadworks miraculously disappeared, digging ceased and traffic cones vanished. We are told that Transco, BT and Thames Water cannot phase "essential" roadworks for public convenience. Yet a weirdo has only to write "smash capitalism" on a website and holes are filled in and roadworks cease. What wondrous urban discipline can be induced by a bit of anarchy.

Across Europe yesterday, people took to the streets to celebrate 1 May. In France, tens of thousands declared their opposition to something real, the threat of revived fascism. Having failed to vote against Le Pen's National Front last week, the French public is now stirred into action.

Britain faces no such threat. The last cause that enraged enough people to make them take to the streets en masse was the poll tax. It was nasty. But the May Day disturbances of the past three years have been no worse than a bad night of football hooliganism.

I believe the police overreact to these vandals and simply provoke the publicity they crave.

Modern London is not under serious threat from street politics. Yesterday's traditional trade-union rally in Trafalgar Square was peaceful, a nostalgic rerun of Sixties worker solidarity marches. The turnout was as paltry as the oratory was weak. Gone are the days of Ban the Bomb.

The police maintain that hidden forces were allthetime plotting dastardly deeds on the fringe. While in past years there has been some smashing of windows, there was nothing to justify the media and the police to hype the "Wombles" to the extent of driving £20 million worth of business out of town.

The tragedy of 11 September has made madmen of us all. And where is this reverence for public safety when Joe Public needs it? I am tempted to wonder if the Marxists are right. There is one law-and-order for the West End and another for the rest of the metropolis.

London used to take social unrest in its stride. Historically, the city has been no stranger to riots. The anti-Papist riots of the Restoration saw the annual burning of effigies of the Pope stuffed with live cats, "which squalled most hideously as they felt the fire". Weavers would assault wearers of imported calico in the streets, as they do furwearers today.

Gin drinkers rioted against the licensing laws. London workers perpetually rioted against immigrant workers, burning " Taffy" on St David's Day and "Paddy" on St Patrick's.

The radical, John Wilkes, was elected Mayor of London and led anti-government demonstrations against George III, which he defended as "peaceful beyond the smashing of windows and the like".

The Gordon Riots of 1780 saw mobs 50,000 strong burning the houses of rich Roman Catholics, while a Catholic distiller saw 120,000 gallons of gin go up in flames. And the attempt to seize the Bank of England only failed thanks to a volley of musket shot.

In those days the authorities were probably right to react in kind.

During the Chartist riots of 1848, no fewer than 85,000 police " specials" were mobilised. The first so-called "Bloody Sunday" was in November 1887, when the police beat up crowds who had smashed windows at Peter Robinson and Marshall and Snelgrove. Even then, the worst thing a London mob could do was threaten the plate glass of the West End.

Street politics in a democracy is essentially about gaining publicity. But it needs some sense of direction. Yesterday's causes were boutique anarchism. Hangerson professed Marxism, veganism, animal rights, debt relief, cycle lanes, nuclear disarmament and the smashing of global capitalism. Yet there was no fatcat G-8 summit to attack, no UN poverty summit in a luxury hotel to target. This was anarcho-tourism, which is why it is was mostly peaceful. Most of the participants looked as bored as the journalists and tourists. Only the police seemed content, and they were on overtime.

The American sociologist, Robert Putnam, wrote recently that collective action is in decline. Lacking causes to bind them together, people no longer join clubs. They go "Bowling Alone". This is a threat to democracy because democracy depends on the habit of social association.

Britons too lack the coherent causes that once drew them on to the streets. If they riot, they go "rioting alone". On the whole they vote.

France, not London, shows what happens to nations that forget that preference. That is yesterday's message for today.

VOTE NOW