JG Ballard’s dystopias vindicated ? Plainclothes officers wield batons in G20 protests

I’m a big fan of two of JG Ballard’s later near-future dystopias: Super-Cannes and Kingdom Come.  In both novels he depicts a state-within-a-state world of gated communities and out-of-town developments terrorised by privatised ’security’ and surveillance.

While Super-Cannes at least affords the comfort of placing the action in the (admittedly jarringly incongruous) setting of the French Riviera, Kingdon Come puts chav-clad private armies on the streets of the M4 corridor’s satellite towns.  There, and under the influence of a charismatic leader who fronts a TV shopping channel, they patrol the streets surrounding a shopping centre, like sentinels around a latter-day temple.

As with Orwell in 1984, what makes Ballard’s vision so effective and so frightening,  is just how familiar the environment is.  He uses his workaday descriptive prose to illustrate just how little dys needs adding to our current topia to end up in hell.  The overt violence of his marauding vigilantes trades on an undercurrent that his readers sense all around them.

And now, we can see it in action.

Of all the copper-beats-crusty shakycam clips we’ve seen post-G20 protest, the Guardian provides perhaps the most chilling today.  The sight of uniformed riot police may be a commonplace, an expected presence.  The high-visibility jackets, shields and batons are familiar and, while threatening, don’t feel out of place in the scenario.  But the sight of plainclothes officers marching alongside, dressed in the everyday chav kit of light jeans, Harrington-type jackets and baseball caps and wielding batons is truly frightening because it degrades the image of the police from one of authority (conferred through the uniform and equipment and the sheer massedness of their ranks) to one of shame for deploying unidentifiable armed individuals in thug-type get up.

If one of those guys hits you, who do you complain to ?