The reality of elective dictatorship is revealed by the pained noises made by near-minority governments who cannot get their wishes nodded through the House and who, therefore, have to resort to trying to convince enough Members to vote for what is on offer. There is, politically, a democratic deficit indeed. In Scotland there has also been, for centuries but perhaps soon to be remedied, a deficit of an altogether different order - a constitutional deficit. Scotland is, perhaps, the only country with recognised and enforceable laws of its own but with no legislature of its own. In Scotland, this democratic double deficit very often leaves concerned people with little option but to consider taking direct action.
Violence is, like many things, objectionable - other things being equal.
The trouble with the real world is that 'other things' are very rarely equal and to be violent, or not to be violent, is a complex question. It has to be said that non-violence should be the norm and departure from it should be a course of last resort. There is also the fact that to contest an issue violently must, of necessity, distract attention from that issue and divert attention to questions of 'who started it' 'law and order' and all the rest. We must face the fact that direct action is, in principle, necessitated by the democratic deficit but that, while violence should not be excluded absolutely, any non-violent options open to concerned persons should be exploited to the full. Police, like the rest of us, are people with an interest in a greener world.