The Mayor of London Kev Livingstone appeared this morning (Sunday the 29th April, 9am) on BBC's flagship political programme. Other than whinging on the usual issue of tube ownership (i.e he doesn't run it), he made a few comments on the Mayday protests. My tape did not get the whole interview relative to the action.

(Before this bit, Livingstone agrees that a) Peaceful protesters concerned about the issues raised should not attend, since it is not a peaceful protest and b) The police have sufficently cracked down this year. Isn't that nice?)

Frost: So it's Zero Tolerance from the police, cracking down on protesters threatening violence straight away.

Livingstone: At the sligtest sign of violence people will be arrested. The problem in this is, they seem to be trying to target oxford circus, they'll be a lot of innocent people around. If someone throws something through a plate glass window, you can get with those shards of glass blind or killed. Workers/customers should be concerned.

Frost: And what about the tensions that have been billed. There's been so much publicity over what happened last year. Some say the police overreacted last year, they will be more of them this year. Do you think that there's too much preocuppation with Mayday because of last year?

Livingstone: Well, I think the complaints last year were because the police didn't crack down harder. But last year, we were all caught a bit by the scan of the violence that had been planned. Of course this was violence that had been planned, not a demonstration that had gone wrong. The objective was those scenes of mayhem, and because you are talking about people who planned that - they come and they put on the masks, it's difficult to get shots of them for the cameras. And so, they all got away the ringleaders last year. We hope this year the crowd numbers will be well down, so the police hope that they can get the ringleaders for both last year and this year's crime - doing time for both.

(conversation goes off on a tangent)

Livingstone, for all his socialist credentials, smacks of being an establishment bastard, possibly to save his own behind. Obviously issues which we should protest about should be his issues (such as the tube) and in a nice, orderly fashion. Easy to ignore, out of sight and out of mind. However, the reach of the police involvement this year, as much as it's being played up by the Met and by their close allies, is rather disturbing. Since they are only expecting violence on may the first, i.e everyone shall be treated with the same brush, Livingstone seems to be authorizing Martial Law on May 1st.