New Methods Of Riot Control

Southland Times, Issue 23179, 21 April 1937, Page 4

New Methods Of Riot Control

The development of a modern technique in the handling of rioters was indicated by a cable message printed yesterday. According to the Paris correspondent of The Times, the French .police have at last succeeded in finding a machine “which can be controlled from either end, carries two drivers and a ‘gunner’ amidships with two quick-firing guns.” Instead of bullets, however, these guns shoot celluloid pellets which are alleged to be harmless “but give a nasty knock at a range of 25 yards.” There is also a device for projecting sand “at a high velocity” and which spreads the jet in a fine spray “with considerable blinding and choking effect.” Some doubt seems to exist as to whether this sand shower is likely to endanger eyesight; but in the meantime the French authorities are probably congratulating themselves on finding still another method of inducing rioters to turn aside from unlawful occasions and return peaceably, if somewhat ■blindly, to their homes. Rioting in France is sufficiently frequent to warrant a technical approach to the problem of controlling excited crowds: a nation which takes politics seriously and is temperamentally disposed to an emotional effervescence is bound to have a minority of extremists who take to the streets as a final method of expressing political opinion. It is not at all likely, however, that the new sand machine will be imported to England. British crowds march in processions, and sometimes there are clashes between j the supporters of rival parties, as in the recent disturbances in East London when Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts came into collision with the Communists. But the London police have a reputation for handling the unruly elements in a crowd, and the British public likes to believe that its own innate orderliness puts it beyond the reach of incidents of the kind that have left some dark passages in contemporary history. This may be true, although after the recent disturbances The New Statesman and Nation printed letters from reputable and intelligent observers which claimed that police supervision at fascist meetings and during protest marches had been anything but gentle, and that there had been too many signs of the aggressive tactics which come into use when nerves are frayed. One point worth mentioning is that the London police seem to rely too much on their mounted men for the controlling of crowds. No matter how carefully a horse is handled, it becomes a dangerous factor in a press of angry or frightened people. But it is better than the machine-guns that have been brought out on more than one occasion during the strikes in America. It is true that no shots have been fired; hut the psychological effect of facing armed soldiers cannot be a good one—the memory of such incidents must go a long way towards aggravating class differences and postponing the settlement of disputes. One other thought must have occurred to many people who read the cable message announcing the French innovation. Clumsy though it may be—and provocative in its possible effect on mob psychology —it does indicate a carefulness for human life. For the idealist it will suggest an ultimate humaneness of warfare: an armada of bombers spraying cities of the future with a mere sleeping gas, in the manner of a recent film by H. G. Wells, and a new strategy based on the use of nonlethal weapons. But such thoughts are mere dreams, coming vainly at a time when Madrid lies shattered with shellfire, and lead instead of sand is spraying the last outposts in Abyssinia.