Paul Kingsnorth

I've just watched the video of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests, which is, rightly, headlining the news at the moment. It's always hard to judge from a film, especially a grainy, shaky one, what exactly was going on. We have perhaps thirty seconds of footage here, with little context to it. We can't hear what anybody says, nor do we know what happened before or after. We can't tell whether this contributed to Tomlinson's later death; though it surely must have had an impact.

What we do know, though, because we can see it clearly, is that a police officer in riot gear attacked this man, from behind, and knocked him to the floor. Perhaps Tomlinson said something to him to provoke him; perhaps he didn't. It doesn't matter. What matters is that this is a deliberate physical attack, by a masked, armed agent of the state, on an unarmed man who is offering him no physical resistance at all - indeed, is actually walking away from him.

What will happen now is clear already. Some activists will try to make a martyr out of Ian Tomlinson, as they did Carlo Giuliani, the activist who was shot dead at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. I was at Genoa, a few streets away when it happened. It was horrific. Nonetheless, I don't like the making of martyrs. Though Tomlinson (unlike Giuliani) was clearly not attacking anyone when he was assaulted, it does no-one any favours to create posthumous heroes to serve the political purposes of others.

It's also worth getting some perspective on policing at UK demos. There'll be a lot of talk of 'fascist' policing, but having been in Genoa and seen genuine fascists in riot gear - and we're talking open admirers of Mussolini here, with guns on their belts - and having seen what happens when they go ape, we have to admit that our police don't do demos as badly as many others around the world.

But what we also need to admit - and what ought to be heard loud and clear now as the Met and the cops who were there that day begin to lie, deny and cover up, and smear the dead man and the other protesters - is that our police are getting worse. When they police demos like this they do not do so to 'keep order' , protect citizens or see that the law is maintained. They do so to protect the interests of the state and the interests of property. They see protesters, demonstrators and dissenters as an enemy to be conquered. And increasingly they are giving up even pretending otherwise.

Tooled up in riot gear that looks more threatening every year, with their faces masked as they film those of other people, and armed with increasingly authoritarian powers from a government that seems determined to give them everything they need to prevent any dissent whatsoever, there is a real danger that the police in this country could get seriously out of control - particularly at big events like this. Watch that video and see if you can spot any evidence of the police protecting the people or preventing laws from being broken. What you see is a police officer blatantly assaulting a passerby, egged on or passively observed by his colleagues. It's clear whose side the cops are on here, and what they came out to do. This should probably not be a surprise, but I'll bet it's not a message the media will be putting out much.

Britain is not a police state. Yet. But we're not as far off as we think we are either.