The call by the Home Office to the MoD asking for armed support to the Metropolitan police this weekend sets a very dangerous precedent in the 21st Century.
Military Aid to Civil Power in mainland Britain has not been used for over a century because our volunteer army has always been very nervous about any role which pitches it against sections of the society from which it draws its recruits.
The Peterloo Massacre in 1819, the Merthyr Riots in 1831 and the Preston Strike in 1842 all proved to be disastrous examples of the British Government using armed troops against the civilian population. They led to the decision not to use armed soldiers to deal with civilian crimes despite many terrible mass shootings and terrorist attacks in the past 50 years. You only have to look at when the army was sent to Northern Ireland in 1969 to see the risks associated with any form of military support to the police.
Senior army officers, serving in the MoD, should have red-flagged this Home Office request as their predecessors did in the past. So is this an example of a major change in military policy, or of a naïve duty officer who did not know his, or her, history?
22 Civilians were killed by the Sherwood Foresters outside the Westgate Hotel in 1839