British PM unveils anti-riot measures

Metropolitan Police officers arrest a suspect after carrying out a raid on a property in London during Operation Woodstock which has been launched to quell riots and a Muslim man (inset) looks at flowers left at the crime scene yesterday where three Asians were killed in the early hours Wednesday in Birmingham. Photo: AFP

British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled yesterday new measures to end the worst riots in decades, and admitted he had considered ordering the army to quell the violence.
Bolstered police forces in London and other English cities maintained calm overnight, and courts stayed open through the night to deal with more than 1,200 people who have been arrested for looting and rioting.
Cameron told an emergency session of parliament that he had given police extra powers, including the ability to order youths to remove face coverings.
Cameron said anyone whose property was damaged in the riots in London and other cities, during which dozens of buildings have been torched and four people killed, would be compensated.
"We will not let a violent few beat us," he told lawmakers.
"We need to show the world, which has looked on frankly appalled, that the perpetrators of the violence we have seen on our streets are not in any way representative of our country -- nor of our young people."
He also said that a year before London hosts the 2012 Olympics Britain needed to show a more positive face to the world.
Britain is still reeling after four of the worst nights of rioting for decades, which started in London then spread to other English cities including Manchester and Birmingham.
Cameron, who cut short his holiday to deal with the crisis, said initially that "simply far too few police were deployed onto the streets", adding that police had treated it as a public order situation instead of criminality.
But he admitted for the first time that he and senior security officials had discussed calling out the military to help, and had raised the possibility of a curfew.
Those included "some simple guarding tasks" but added this was "not for today, it is not even for tomorrow, it is just so you have contingency plans in case it becomes necessary."
He reiterated that police had been given powers to use water cannon and plastic bullets.
The riots started on Saturday, sparked by anger over the shooting by police of a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan, in the deprived north London district of Tottenham.