[Photo by RachelH/bagelmouse]
London Bridge, the G20 protest [15:09]
Protestors are demanding the right to create and use a selection of new nicknames for the police. While the English language already features a wide selection of slang terms, slurs, and epithets to describe the constabulary, many of these are now out-dated or obscure.
“We need a new language of engagement,” says Pippa Frond of the Alliance for Modern Nomenclature, or ANN. “It’s 2009 and the world has changed. We can go around calling people ‘rozzer’ or ‘shamus’ any more. It’s ludicrous.”
“Actually, ‘shamus’ isn’t even a British word,” agrees Mike Toliver of Stockbridge, who has come to London to demonstrate against the United States posture on using hormones to enhance milk production in cattle – a practice he says results in dangerous levels of carcinogens and pus in the milk. “But Pippa’s quite right. It’s awful having to carry placards around the city and shout something fatuous like ‘get lost, pigs!’ – and it could be offensive to some ethnic minority officers. I mean, the whole point is to be offensive to police, sure, but not on the basis of race or religion. That’s just wrong.”
Professor Delia McReady of Edinburgh University objects: “These older expressions are a wealth of cultural and linguistic heritage, it’s a shame to talk about throwing them away.” Professor McReady is demonstrating in favour of a ban on immigration ‘until the UK can get itself sorted out’. “I feel a sort of a warm glow when I yell ‘kill the peelers!’ or ‘does a copper bleed green?’ or any of these old familiar battlecries. I used to go to Glasgow with my father when he was starting riots in the sixties, and it gives me a sense of real continuity.”
Finding a common language is vital, though, says Ms Frond, as without it, joint actions become infinitely more difficult to coördinate.
“It’s bad enough as it is,” she explains, “we’ve got Climate Camp and the Campaign Against The Arms Trade on one side and out-of-work coal-miners and so on on the other, and they don’t agree on anything except that the government’s doing a bad job and the banks should all be burned – well, except Climate Camp, who I believe want them made into BioChar, which is a similar sort of idea. But take those difficulties and add in problems of language, and you’ve got chaos. This morning, I shouted out ‘Lilly Law needs a kicking’ and everyone just looked at me. So I said it was ‘slap a flatfoot time’ and that was even worse. Apparently ‘flatfoot’ can also mean ‘sailor’. And you can’t use ‘bluecoat’ because some people assume it means ‘nurse. Even ‘plod’ won’t always do the job. It’s a catastrophe.”
“I can see how it gives them trouble,” says Detective Steve Ruddil of the Metropolitan Police. “I mean, half the time with these big international demonstrations our lads don’t know if they’re being threatened with a plank or asked for directions to Colchester. And of course, we have a measure of the same problem in reverse. We can’t use racial identifiers these days, and words like ‘youth’ and ‘thug’ have been rather devalued by the tabloids. Some of my lot like the American ‘perpetrator’, but to be honest with you I think it sounds a bit 2000AD. We’re going with ‘suspect’ at the moment, but it can be hard to keep a straight face with that one. I mean, if you handcuff some headbanger from Plymouth while he’s trying to bash his way through the wall of a bank, you feel a right tit telling your super he’s suspected of property damage. We get a lot of laughs out of that, you know: ‘what caused you to suspect the gentleman of vandalism, officer?’ ‘Well, mlud, my attention was first piqued when he smashed a fourteen foot plate glass window with his head’. You know. Stuff like that. But yes, it’d be nice if they’d settle on a term of abuse for us, then we’d know where we stand.”
ANN has drawn up a list of possible new terms which might be used in future. “They need to be clear, shoutable words,” Pippa Frond observers, “but at the same time one wants them to be internationally recognisable. This is a branding exercise. Although I don’t mean we’re actually going to burn anyone with a hot metal thing. That’s not what ANN is about at all.”
Proposals so far include:
Boxers
Lacks
Hoofies
Weebles
Hobnails
Mr & Mrs Pointy
Rhinos
Fugglies
Roomhahas
Gam-Goms
Yaiyais
and
Cartibarts.
No one was able to explain why.
A spokesman for the Climate & Economic Action Committee said: “Are you sure you’re a journalist? Really, there are more important issues. This all sounds rather silly.”
