Across the globe, civilised society is menaced by the mob 

Britain not only has a spike in Covid-19 infections, worrying enough as that is. We also have a spike in violence and lawlessness, which is potentially worse. The horrific stabbings in

Birmingham on Sunday may be an isolated incident, although such random attacks on the public are more frequent. But the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests on Friday night, which prevented

1.5 million newspapers being distributed, were a concerted challenge to the rule of law and the freedom of the press. These are two of the pillars of a civilised society that is now menaced

by the mob.

Many people sympathise with the aims of XR, but no political end, however noble, can justify any means at all. In this case the environmental movement has allowed itself to become the

vehicle of extremist groups that seek to destroy capitalism and overturn parliamentary democracy. The police are caught between a rock and a hard place: if they arrest protestors and enforce

the law, they are accused of propping up the very system that XR blames for endangering humanity. If officers stand by and “observe” militants as they besiege printing plants or think tank

offices, block roads or target individuals, they only encourage further defiance of the law and lose the confidence of the public. 

The Home Secretary was quick to condemn XR’s stunt, but she has yet to devise a response that commands compliance from the chief constables and is compatible with the criminal justice

system. Priti Patel cannot count on unconditional support from the Prime Minister, who was mysteriously invisible over the summer when the Black Lives Matter protests were tearing down or

defacing statues. Verbal denunciations of movements that believe themselves above the law are simply not enough: actions speak louder than tweets. During the strikes and riots of the 1980s,

nobody was in any doubt about where Margaret Thatcher stood on law and order. Boris Johnson seems hesitant, even half-hearted, by comparison.  

The Tory Government’s ambivalence is as nothing, however, compared to the Labour Party’s internal conflict. Over the weekend Sir Keir Starmer issued a brief condemnation: “Denying people the

chance to read what they choose is wrong and does nothing to tackle climate change.” Careful not to actually mention XR and its tactics or to say what the police should have done about

them, the Labour leader was at least unequivocal. Yet a senior figure in his party, the former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, was equally unequivocal in her support for XR. Dawn Butler,

a member of the Shadow Cabinet, also tweeted her support, but later deleted the comment. 

It is clear that the Opposition is split down the middle, between those who see BLM and XR as part of a long tradition of legitimate civil disobedience — Ms Abbott compared them to the

Suffragettes — and those who see the increasingly aggressive style of these mass protests as unacceptable. It seems that Diane Abbott, who would be in charge of the Home Office now if Labour

had won last December, cannot see the difference between women last century demanding democracy and XR demanding that democracy be overruled to “save the planet”.

Across the world, other nations are confronting similar dilemmas. In France, President Macron is promising voters tough action on the crime and disorder that everywhere seem to have

mushroomed since the peak of the pandemic. It is as if the provisional lifting of lockdown had released pent-up energies and social tensions. 

Such disorder is most apparent, of course, in the United States, where the wave of racial violence that has swept over dozens of cities during the summer shows no sign of abating. In some

urban areas, armed militias and vigilantes are roaming the streets, as the authorities struggle to contain a conflict that has far transcended its original rationale of preventing police

violence against black people. The prospect of paramilitary patrols on the streets is unpalatable enough, but fear of arson, looting and murder runs deep. If the spectre of mob rule

continues to haunt America, even a presidential election may not lay it to rest.

Here in Britain, we are some way off from the kind of collapse of order that has convulsed the United States. A descent here into the chaos of Kenosha, Wisconsin or Portland, Oregon is

unlikely — if only because racial segregation is less severe in the UK than in the US. Birmingham, England is not Birmingham, Alabama. Yet the epidemic of knife crime, the subculture of

street gangs and other ugly phenomena indicate that our society, too, is in the grip of a deadly malaise for which we have yet to find a cure. And we are not talking about coronavirus. The

name for this malaise is mob rule.

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