There is a story in the UK media (see here for the Daily Mail version) about how local residents in the Bournemouth area of southern England have banded together to form “vigilante” groups – working with local police, it should be noted – to deal with crime.
When temperatures hit the mid-30s last month, brawls broke out in broad daylight, while a woman in her late teens was raped in a beachside public toilet just days later leading to the arrest of a man who has now been released on bail.
And many residents have had enough, with more than 200 volunteers including security professionals and first aiders signing up to the Safeguard Force to tackle the tourist hotspot’s descent into lawlessness.
The group, set up by local businessman Gary Bartlett, aims to ‘protect the most vulnerable in our town – especially women, children and the elderly’.
They have already raised more than £3,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to buy body cameras, stab vests and radios.
It would be easy to focus on the continued degradation and decline of the UK, the nastiness, nihilism, scruffiness and genuine shitty state of it all. Reeves. Starmer, etc. But I want to take a slightly different tack.
The tack – hauling in the mainsail, lads! – is that this shows that when pushed sufficiently, people can and do band together to bring certain outcomes about, and seek to frustrate others. A few weeks ago I re-read, after many years, Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous book, Democracy in America. He noted the enthusiasm with which American citizens formed associations of all kinds, from the frivolous to the deadly serious. Around the time he wrote that book (in two volumes, the first was completed in the 1830s, the second in the 1840s) the UK had gone through the experiment, under Sir Robert Peel, of forming official police forces, starting with the Metropolitan Police, aka “The Met”. His principles of how a police force should operate are still referred to. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were societies for the “prosecution of felons” – a classic case of a private provider of a “public good”.
There is, in most developed countries, a sort of social compact: The State will take on the role of seeking to catch and deter criminals, and in return, the citizens will abjure the freedom to take the law into their own hands. This compact has to work to a certain level of effectiveness. When police become distracted by politically motivated rubbish, such as “non-crime hate incidents” and so forth, and morale is damaged (many coppers have left the forces, because they are angry about such nonsense), you get a problem. Crime clear-up rates are low; I come across complaints that people rarely bother to log crimes out of cynicism that not much will be done. And then there are worries that crimes against persons and property appear to be treated more leniently than fashionable concerns. Result: the compact is fraying to the point of breakdown.
And so we have what is happening in Bournemouth. This will spread. I can expect to read more articles about people learning self-defence, increased community patrols, and controversies about what the limits are in being able to enforce laws. (It is worth remembering that at this point, it is legally difficult for UK citizens to use lethal force in self-defence.)
Nature abhors a vacuum, in public policy as much as anything else. There are going to be consequences. Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” are going to be more in evidence.
Ah yes…….the war torn & dangerous streets of Bournemouth.
I’ll believe in the “little platoons” when I see them out actively confronting in Central London/Birmingham/Liverpool/Manchester & Newcastle….
It’s actually the smaller towns where, very often, really bad things happen…
Gradually, then all-at-once . . . .
llater,
llamas
NickM, exactly. I thought David Morris’ comment was dismissive, to be polite.
In any event, Bournemouth is worth noting precisely because its image in the past was that of a genteel seaside town. No longer.
Check this out:
Considering that the police, as well as the policial class, has capitulated by and large to the muslim invaders what’s the use of working with the local police.
I almost cited this:
It is my belief Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
-Sherlock Holmes.
Yes, JP, many of our resort towns have indeed become utter dens of iniquity. God knows what Basil would make of it…
I suspect they had no alternative to do so.
Never thought I’d see the day when my entrepreneurial friends would be discussing smuggling stuff into . . . England!
But here we are.
My mother had an expression: “why have a dog and bark yourself?” which I suppose in retrospect is rather rude.
It seems a very sad indictment of Britain that they have a fully paid professional police force and criminal investigation squad, but need to resort to the posse as if they were in the lawless wild west.
And the saddest thing of all? I’d suggest that they should NOT work closely with the local police since they are probably more likely to get arrested themselves for some inappropriate remark or trivial violation than any actual criminal.
Such groups of ordinary people have a long tradition in this land – far older than police forces, which only became compulsory in 1856.
Sometimes they acted on their own bringing criminals to justice – there was no such thing as “Public Prosecution”, apart from offenses directly against the Crown, before the 1870s. And sometimes they acted because a Justice of the Peace or a Sheriff of the County appealed for aid.
Neither unpaid J.Ps. or the unpaid Sheriffs had any forces of their own – to enforce the law they had to call on the people to help them.
In 1911 (yes as late as that) police in London, finding themselves outgunned by criminals, called upon armed passers-by to help them.
In London in 1911, unlike New York, there were no “gun control laws”.
A follower of Jeremy Bentham, Sir Edwin Chadwick, attacked private action to uphold justice – and wrote reports to try and discredit private action.
Sadly some historians still take the reports of Sir Edwin Chadwick, on a wide variety of matters, as objective truth – in reality they are ideological documents designed to promote a larger and more active state.
Such thinkers as Chadwick and Bentham seem to have drawn their inspiration from the Prussia of Frederick the Great.
By what law should the people act?
By the non aggression principle – natural law, natural justice.
As Bracton (Judge as well as Churchman) pointed out back in the 1200s even the King is not above the law – on the contrary he is under the law, and “Parliament” did not exist in the time of Bracton.
No “Rex” (King) if WILL replaces LEX (the law – specifically the principles of natural justice).
Two questions arise – was the act a violation (was it an aggression against the body or goods of another person) and was the action voluntarily chosen, by someone who could have chosen to do otherwise (determinism and the fraud of “compatibilism” are not compatible with justice) – if they did not CHOOSE to do what they did, there may be a tort (damages for an accidental action), but there is no crime – for there is no “guilty mind” as Bracton put it.
In effect Bracton refuted Thomas Hobbes (and later philosophers such as Hume and Bentham) centuries before Thomas Hobbes was born.
And law is NOT the whims of judges – for judges themselves are under (not over) the principles of law.
“But Paul such principles of natural justice are no longer taught – indeed they are mocked by the modern legal establishment”.
Perhaps – but if (if) that is the case, then this system will eventually collapse – and rightly so.
With all due respect, from the other side of the Atlantic it looks like Britain is lost to the invaders. If your local Committees of Vigilance become in any way effective; you can surely expect that the Coercive Organs of State Power will be exclusively aimed at the Committees. And I expect that deadly force will by used by said Organs.
Subotai Bahadur
I can’t really tell if they’re lost to the invaders, or to the Bringers Of The Invasion.
I suspect they could win a civil war against the invaders and still face national ruin – the invaders are more of a symptom of ruin – but a civil war against the government could actually result in a national restructuring.
I see my maxim of “Police do not exist to protect citizens from criminals, but criminals from citizens” is being proven true. Again.
The European Convention of Human Rights, by instituting an elitist kritocracy, has all but negated these “Little Platoons” before they have even started.
I agree with the Paul Marks, more likely these people, however well meaning, are going to be primary victims of the police under non-crime crimes.
Your little platoons will be called right wing death squads, the official police will be asked to hunt them down.
And being civil servants the official police will try, badly, and fail.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/08/police-warn-wrexham-shopkeeper-thieves-scumbags/
This is the sort of thing British Plod cares about.
Marius,
True. But it is so much easier than actually catching violent criminals isn’t it? Anyway, even if they do… This happens…
Look at the plight of that! It identifies as a “woman”. It can’t even be arsed to shave.
Fred_Z,
Already anyone who is more liberal* than of Ed Davey is “far right”. So, they’d be “FAR Right Death Squads”.
*I mean that in the classical sense. William Gladstone was a NAZI, right?
It’s easy to focus on those things if you spend too much time cooking your brain by doomscrolling social media. Fraser Nelson makes a good case against the ‘broken UK’ narrative
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/violent-lawless-broken-britain-reform-dt0skh6wf
Mila s
Sadly Fraser Nelson is mistaken – as will become increasingly obvious over the coming years.
Milas, I haven’t a Times sub so I’ll take your word for it that the article says crime data and fears of broken Britain are overwrought. Fraser Nelson is a good journalist and not someone to underestimate problems. He has done important work about the horrendous dependency culture in the country, truancy and the devastation of lockdowns.
But I don’t think worries about crime can be pushed aside. Petty crimes such as shoplifting and vandalism seem to be bad in some towns and cities. It also affects poor by pushing up prices.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/24/shoplifting-uk-crime-retail-police-ons-data
Here are official crime statistics. The government notes the caveats about police reporting. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingseptember2024
The citizens of Bournemouth aren’t necessarily going to parse official reports. They’ll look at what they see in front of them. And that’s why they’ve acted. If you or anyone else want to convince them that they’re delusional, good luck.
There’s another point. Even if overall crime levels are down in the U.K., the sense of things coming apart isn’t just about doomscrolling or whatever. Based just on my own experience as a Londoner, it does seem scruffier and more weighed down. Some of that maybe that as I’ve aged and become more intolerant of slovenly behaving more alert to stuff I didn’t really notice in my younger days. But I dint think that’s the only factor.
Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph argues for NY-style zero-tolerance policing that cracks down on stopping vandalism, theft and antisocial behaviour. A reason is to shift expectations across a culture about what’s acceptable.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingseptember2024
From what I’ve read the crime stats Fraser Nelson cites omit shoplifting, which is rather convenient if you’re trying to present crime as falling. The fact that pretty basic items like coffee have security tags on in supermarkets just illustrates how bad shoplifting is in many parts of the UK. It’s not as bad as it is in many US cities, but it is definitely worse than it used to be.
I keep seeing stats that purport to show how we are safer than ever from crime. But, I wonder.
In some states, the numbers of crimes seem stable. But it is important WHERE crimes are occurring within those states, too.
Used to be, the Violent Underclass victimized their own neighborhoods. High stats, but most normies merely read about it – it didn’t happen where we were.
But now, the VU has branched out, and few places are immune from their efforts.
So all of us normies are now seeing it. Our enclaves – i.e., anywhere where the VU don’t live – are approaching the crime levels of the worse places.
Bank robber Willie Sutton supposedly said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. The VU has now figured that out for its own benefit.
Apologies for commenting off-topic, but i fear that i’ll forget about this by the time i can post on-topic.
NY Post via Instapundit:
This bears on previous discussions on this forum, about freedom of speech: its ideal limits, if any; and its actual limits in the US.
It also bears on my previous rants about mental health, if you think about it.