LONDON — When Prime Minister David Cameron faced an emergency session of the House of Commons on Thursday to account for his government’s handling of some of Britain’s darkest days since World War II, he was, in a sense, a man on trial.
Mr. Cameron had already taken a battering earlier in the summer with a series of revelations in a roiling phone hacking scandal that cast doubt on his judgment in hiring as his spokesman a former tabloid editor now arrested on suspicion of hacking. The scandal exposed close and collusive relationships between Britain’s political elite, the police and the news media. And as rampaging mobs swept through at least 20 of Britain’s biggest cities and towns with a fury that took the police days to bring under control, Mr. Cameron lingered on vacation in a villa in Tuscany before returning home.
Some British commentators compared the moment to 30 years ago, when the stewardship of another Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was threatened by the last major riots to convulse the nation. But this, many in Britain agreed, was more serious: the damage far greater in wrecked communities, shattered city centers and blighted lives, and in seemingly halting, even timorous, policing. Not least, too, there has been the blow to Britain’s pride as a country that has viewed itself as a haven of stability.
For two and a half hours on the Commons floor, Mr. Cameron took questions from anguished, and often angry, lawmakers. They demanded to know why, on the first nights of the rioting, their constituents had been left to cower in fear in their homes and elsewhere while police officers in riot gear stood back, armed only with nightsticks, under orders not to engage the rioters.
It was the longest inquisition of its kind that any prime minister has faced in living memory. Not even Winston Churchill, often described as the greatest Commons man in history, endured such a protracted grilling. But when it was over, there were signs that the political winds against Mr. Cameron were shifting as the mood of the nation had swung sharply to the right in a way that may play to the Conservatives’ traditional posture as the country’s law-and-order party.
Labour Party lawmakers, only a few weeks ago emboldened by the phone hacking scandal, were reluctant to challenge more than obliquely Mr. Cameron’s insistence that the rioting was “a matter of criminality, pure and simple,” with “absolutely no excuse” in terms of joblessness, racial alienation and social deprivation in the neighborhoods from which many of the rioters came.
For the first time, its deputy assistant commissioner admitted Thursday that the force did not deploy enough officers to control the outbreak of violence early on in the riots. Cameron also acknowledged shortcomings by police. He said they treated the early riots as a “public order issue” rather than a crime problem.
And according to law enforcement experts in the U.S., the first few hours are pivotal.
Bill Gavin, the former head of the FBI in New York, told Fox News that there’s a philosophical difference between London police and its U.S. cousin departments. In particular, London failed to deploy an overwhelming force to halt the rioters.
“The time for reasoning is after you’ve controlled them,” Gavin said, adding that Bratton would serve as a suitable adviser.
Bratton’s experience with law enforcement is extensive and diverse. He reduced gang-related crimes in Boston and Los Angeles. He has worked with the British in the past, and was given an honorary title by Queen Elizabeth II in 2009, Reuters reported.
"There are many lessons from these experiences that I believe are relevant to the current situation in England," Bratton said.
Britain's riots began Saturday when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting in north London turned violent. That clash triggered wider lawlessness that police struggled to halt.
There are currently 16,000 police deployed on London's streets to deter rioters and reassure residents, and those forces are expected to remain through the weekend.
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