That's why I was wondering whether the Police had got it wrong on a strategic level, were holding back in case they fuelled things during the day even more considering the turnout, or Police officer morale is just really low?
It's not impossible for all three of those factors to have been at work - they're not mutually exclusive.
I'd be hesitant to say that moral is low, but only because I don't know/socialise with OB and don't know anyone who does - so I've simply no way of guaging this. And given that for large numbers of the population who will most definitely be affected by the cuts in the months and years to come, the cuts have still yet to become part of everyday reality, I'd be surprised if a particular section of society that has traditionally been protected from austerity measures in the past (i.e. the OB) were
at present experiencing a drop in moral over something that has yet to happen. I think that any apparent lack of moral on the day is more likely to be explained by officers' own awareness that they weren't being hugely effective.
That said, it did strike me on the day that a significant number of police transports/mini-buses were not their own and had been hired from Europcar - something I've not seen in the past. And - whether through strategic error or design - they were certainly a few steps behind on more than one occasion (e.g. - reinforcements arriving Shaftesbury Avenue long after they were needed; a couple of thousand protestors moving away from Oxford Circus, south down Regent Street, not with the intention of going anywhere else, but to expand the area held by the protestors and make it that much more difficult to kettle - and the police being unable to stop that).
Ultimately though, I think it is perhaps a mistake to concentrate too much on the issue of whether perceived failings in police tactics were as a result of error or came about as a result of a longer strategic view - because from our point of view I don't think it matters hugely.
What I do think we need to remember is;
1. The police have long since stopped being even nominally neutral. By which I
do not mean that they side with capital (that has always been the case) but that at chief constable/intelligence/policy level, they most certainly do have an agenda and are quite happy to lobby for that agenda (the agenda is a quite open one - "we need more resources - look at these threats we are facing") and to engineer situations so that their concerns are shown to have some merit. It may not have been the case that strategic thinking on this occasion was "We'll let the anarchos have their head of steam for a bit - the'll show the government what happens if we don't wade in/have enough resources" - but that doesn't mean they're not capable of this type of thinking/planning.
2. Any hope of breaking significant numbers of police from their traditional role rests on making our fight effective, rather than hoping for strikes or union organisation within police ranks. Their training, conditions, privileged position, isolation from mainstream society all mean that the requisite introspection is unlikely on anything other than an individual level - at least until the question of who governs becomes a much more immediate one.
