The more unequal a society becomes, the more oppressive its laws must be. This, I think, explains new acts that would not be out of place in a police state. So vague and broad are the powers granted to the police under last year’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and this year’s Public Order Act that it is no longer clear where their abuse begins and ends.
At two o’clock on the morning of the coronation, the Metropolitan police, using the Police Act, arrested three people in Soho for carrying rape alarms. The police claimed they were acting on intelligence that rape alarms might be used to frighten the horses that would later be parading elsewhere.
