Following in the footsteps of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hard stance against the Olympic torch relay going through Tibet – a welcome move that was akin to closing the barn door after the horses had escaped – London Mayor Ken Livingstone now says that he made a mistake by allowing Chinese armed security forces to roam the streets of London guarding the Olympic torch.
London’s mayor Ken Livingstone said on Tuesday it was a mistake to allow Chinese secret police officers to guard the Olympic torch when it was paraded through London earlier this month.
“It was wrong and should not have happened,” Livingstone told a BBC Radio London debate.
…Livingstone was asked if he knew in advance that the Olympic torch guards were members of China’s military secret police and he said he did not.
“Had I known, I would have said it was unacceptable,” he said.
But Livingstone apparently didn’t know and thus an unacceptable act took place on the streets of London. Once again, the powers that be in the Western cities that hosted China’s torchwashing of Tibet are realizing too late that they should have handled things differently.
Hold Fast 
To clarify: it’s not Red Ken’s fault. He has no control over the Metropolitan Police; the Home Office does.
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My concern was not with the micro control police behavior or who approved of it in a minute by minute process. My concern is that the Olympic torch was in London under guard by the People’s Armed Police. As the article and Livingstone state, it was a mistake.
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I just wanted to clarify that Livingstone is not admitting a mistake which he had no part in, but is accusing the Brown administration of a mistake.
The question of who made the mistake is not trivial. The Met is, and has been since the time of Robert (“Bobby”) Peel, a police force (the only one in Britain) which is not accountable to the elected representatives of the people it polices, and this has consequences, in London as in Lhasa.
Also, I’m still pissed that the Met’s commissioner Sir Ian Blair was never fired after the police murder of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005.
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OK fair enough. Thanks for the clarification WIIIAI.
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