But politicians need to be wary about complaining that direct action is outside the spectrum of legitimate social protest, that direct action necessarily leads to violence, or even that violence per se is the problem.
Direct action has a long, honourable history in Britain.
It stretches back across struggles over the electoral franchise, to women's right to vote, to the Chartists, Levellers and Diggers and to more than a century of food riots from 1700 onwards. This weekend's events simply give rioting a bad name and deny direct action its proper place in the history of social change. Winston Churchill may look better with a hammer and sickle painted on his buttocks, but it doesn't alter the politics he stood for Historically, the more the formal political system of the day comes to resemble a monoculture of establishment interests, indifferent to inequalities and exploitation in the society at large, the more certain it is that direct action movements will emerge to put the politics back into politics. While the direct action which so effectively dismantled last year's World Trade Organisation conference in Seattle grasped this, London's looting simply lost the plot. Winston Churchill may look better with a hammer and sickle painted on his buttocks, but it doesn't alter the politics he stood for.