Will the police be responsible for G20 violence?

You get the kind of protest you deserve, and this week's demonstrations around the G20 are a case in point.

Police have launched one of the biggest public order operations in British history. And you can see why. With one demo outside the American embassy, taking place at the same time as environmentalists threaten to shut down a major London road, while anarchists congregate outside the Bank of England, police have their hands full. Wednesday will be a limitless logistical nightmare. Thursday, when protestors march right up to a conference centre housing the 20 most important men and women in the world, will probably prove equally tense.

The Metropolitan police deal with about 4,500 protests a year and they've gotten good at it, especially compared to the heavy-handed tactics used in other European countries like Spain or Italy. Late last year, for instance, 13 Italian police were convicted for organising a raid on a school building where protesters slept, and then proceeding to beat them senseless. You don't get that sort of behaviour here. All of which makes the Met's approach to this current wave of demonstrations particularly confusing.

It began with a warning to protest groups that police expected the protest on April 1st to become "very violent", with senior commanders saying they were "up for it" if there was any trouble. The force then refused to rule out using anti-terrorism legislation against the demonstrators.

But you get the kind of protest you deserve. The remarks found their way into the press and the likely outcome is entirely predictable. Comments like these keep families and peaceful protestors at home, while encouraging others, of a certain persuasion, to come along.

The curious and unhelpful police response can partly be put down to anxieties prompted by the volatile and ever-changing politics of the recession. Senior Home Office and security service officials have long been worried about the eventuality of public disorder as the recession bites harder. Hatred of bankers is at an all-time high, and the media and protest groups have capitalised on this for their respective reasons. In Iceland, the government fell due to crisis-related protest. In Ukraine, demonstrators in their thousands hit the centre of Kiev, again in a recession-related outpouring of violence.

But politicians and commentators here are not eating up the police message just yet. David Howarth, a Liberal Democrat MP leading a parliamentary group of observers at the protests, said: "I am increasingly worried that what the police are saying about the protests will end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Andrew Dismore MP, chair of the joint common human rights, said police language in recent days had been "not very helpful".

"The police have a duty under the Human Rights Act to facilitate protest and not frustrate it," he said. "If they act in a confrontational way and use confrontation language, they will start to provoke the kind of behaviour they are seeking to prevent."

Most observers are expecting trouble on Wednesday and Thursday. Some of it will be a product of the natural anger prompted by the recession. Some of it will be because a dedicated group of troublemakers will piggy back on that feeling. Some of it will be because edgy policemen from out of town become heavy-handed in a situation which calls for the precise opposite. And some of it will be because, for all its planning, the Met made an error of judgement in allowing what should have been internal communication to become very much external.

Now, we just have to sit and wait and see what happens.

Ian Dunt