LONDON – In Bristol, an English university town where pubs are usually packed with students, there have been violent clashes between police and protesters. In Kassel, a German city known for its ambitious contemporary art festival, the police launched pepper spray and water cannons at anti-blockade protesters.
A year after European leaders ordered people to enter their homes to contain a deadly pandemic, thousands are invading the streets and squares. They often come across batons and shields, raising questions about tactics and the role of the police in societies where personal freedoms have already given way to public health concerns.
From Spain and Denmark to Austria and Romania, frustrated people are attacking restrictions in their daily lives. With much of Europe facing a third wave of infections that could keep these stifling blocks in place for weeks or even months more, analysts warn that street tensions are likely to increase.
In Britain, where the rapid rate of vaccination has raised hopes for a faster opening of the economy than the government is willing to tolerate, frustration with recent police conduct has grown in a national debate over the legitimacy of the police – which brings distant echoes of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
“What we are seeing is an increasing level of discontent among members of our society who see fundamental illegitimacy in law enforcement under the pandemic,” said Clifford Stott, professor of social psychology at Keele University and a specialist in crowd behavior. “And that created strange bedmates.”
Right-wing politicians who resist blocking restrictions are just as furious as the left-wing climate protesters who regularly obstruct Trafalgar Square in London as part of the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations. The noisy traffic because of these protests was one of the reasons why the authorities pressed for greater powers to restrict these meetings.
Adding to the sense of outrage is the case of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman who was kidnapped and killed, allegedly by a police officer, while walking home in London. The Metropolitan Police then rudely interrupted a vigil for Ms. Everard, claiming that the participants were violating the coronavirus rules on social detachment.
The potential for more confrontations like this is high, said Stott, citing “the warmer climate, the duration of the blockade and the growing dissatisfaction among sectors of the community about the imposition of control measures”.
In Bristol, the trigger for the clashes was to sweep away new legislation that would empower the police to drastically restrict demonstrations. A peaceful “Kill the Bill” rally at the city’s College Green turned violent when some of the protesters marched to a nearby police station and started firing fireworks and projectiles at police officers.
Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees sharply criticized the violence, attributing much of it to outside agitators who, he said, took advantage of a peaceful demonstration as an excuse to start a fight with the system.
But Rees, a Labor Party politician, is also vehemently opposed to the legislation. He said it was rushed and ill-considered – a cynical attempt by a conservative-led government to “gather its base in defense of law and order” during a pandemic.
“You cannot police yourself for peace,” said Rees, adding that he tried to involve the Bristol police in matters such as housing, drug addiction and unemployment. “By the time this is an oversight problem,” he said, “you have already failed.”
The violent clashes in Bristol, which left two police vans charred and 20 policemen injured – one with a punctured lung – are deeply frustrating for Rees, who is the son of a Jamaican father and an English mother.
Last summer, his city became a powerful symbol of the global spread of the Black Lives Matter movement, when a crowd knocked over the statue of a 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, and threw it into Bristol harbor.
This time, however, he fears that images of broken windows and burnt-out police vehicles will help Prime Minister Boris Johnson pass the police law, which has already overcome two major obstacles in Parliament.
“The consequences of what they did is to increase the likelihood of this project getting support,” said Rees.
For many in Britain, this would be a bitter irony, as the pandemic has already led to the greatest restriction of civil liberties in recent memory. Coronavirus regulations that should have lasted no more than a few months have been in place for a year now, causing tensions between the police and the public not only at protests, but also at house parties and even with those who gather on the side outside for coffee.
At the beginning of the pandemic, a local police force used drones to embarrass a couple who were walking a dog on a lonely path. The owners of gyms and sports clubs were invaded by the police when they opened against the regulation.
An earlier version of government regulations on coronavirus contained a clause that allowed for non-violent protests. But that was removed from a later version, leaving the right to peaceful assembly in a kind of legal limbo. According to the latest draft rules, released on Monday, protests would be allowed in limited circumstances, starting next Monday.
These emergency laws were passed in Parliament without the scrutiny normally applied to the legislation. In the absence of a written constitution, Britons who want to take to the streets have to rely on the less clear protection of a human rights law.
In contrast, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court last year guaranteed its citizens’ right to protest, as long as they complied with the rules of social detachment.
“This pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of our unwritten constitution when it comes to certain rights,” said Adam Wagner, a human rights lawyer and expert on coronavirus rules. “If you take democracy representative of the law-making process, you will lose important voices.”
The government presents other arguments for the policing bill. Ministers note, for example, that security costs to protect a new high-speed rail link from environmental protesters were £ 50 million, or $ 69 million.
Priti Patel, the interior minister, condemned the Bristol clashes for “violence and disorder” and said protecting the police was the government’s top priority – though not, she added, of some opposition members.
“We have been clear that, in order to save lives and fight this pandemic, people should not hold large meetings today,” she said in a statement to Parliament. “Many this weekend have selfishly decided that it didn’t apply to them.”
Raising the political temperature even further, the policing bill is being processed in Parliament at the same time that the government is renewing its regulations on the coronavirus, which has also attracted the fire of the libertarian right.
“The Coronavirus Act contains some of the most draconian detention powers in modern British legal history,” said Mark Harper, who chairs the Covid Recovery Group, a bench of conservative lawmakers who criticize the blocking rules.
While many say the debate over the role of the police in Britain is delayed, some sympathize with the situation of the police. They are caught between politicians and the public, with nebulous constitutional status and a changing set of rules to apply, especially during a public health emergency.
“It is not the police’s fault that the coronavirus regulations are partly necessarily draconian and partly unnecessarily draconian,” said Shami Chakrabarti, a civil liberties and political expert at the Labor Party.
The biggest problem, she said, is that Britain tends to conduct debates about the role of the police after violent episodes like a shootout, the murder of Everard or the violent clashes in Bristol. This ignites public opinion in one direction or another, she says, but it can get in the way of careful debate.
“We almost always have this discussion in times of crisis,” said Chakrabarti, “not in times of peace.”