Remember Ian Tomlinson. Strolling, hands in pockets, he seemed a man at ease. Seconds later, came the blow dealt by a baton-wielding police officer and the silent crash of body against pavement. Mr Tomlinson had planned an evening watching football on the television. Instead, he was destined to die in the public eye.
But for an amateur video his last minutes would have remained a private tableau of seemingly gratuitous violence. Instead, millions have watched Mr Tomlinson, a newspaper vendor, walk back from work through the G20 crowds, and fall to the ground after being pushed from behind. Witnesses saw him climb to his feet before he collapsed of a fatal heart attack a short distance away.
The shaky film footage was the cameo of a death foretold, except that the script was not supposed to run like this. Back in February, Britain's most senior police officer in charge of public order warned of social meltdown. Superintendent David Hartshorn predicted violent protests, in which middle-class individuals who had never previously joined a demonstration vented their anger.
A flashpoint, he said, could be the G20. And so the police prepared to subdue a window-smashing orgy by Tupperware anarchists and mobsters in twinsets and pearls. Things did not work out that way.
An attack on a bank aside, the main allegation of brutality centred on the police's own apparent assault on Mr Tomlinson; an episode made doubly ugly by its aftermath. As with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the original explanation – that police had been impeded by bottle-throwing protesters from tending Mr Tomlinson – was wrong. Without a bystander's camera, the truth might never have come to light.
Ian Tomlinson's story is not simply about rogue elements in the police or one man's suspicious death. His fate is a parable of a recession that has exposed the dark heart of authority.
Forecasts of middle-class mayhem and a lawless populace running amok have proved mendacious. People have lost their homes, their savings and their jobs with extraordinarily little complaint or protest.
Nine thousand workers are set to follow their former head, Sir Fred Goodwin, out of the Royal Bank of Scotland's door, but without his £703,000 annual pension. Behind worsening unemployment statistics lie stories of deprivation, uncertainty, fear and impotence. Yet people have borne their anguish with dignity, offering a template of good conduct. In contrast, many elements of the establishment, from police to bankers to politicians, have behaved abysmally.
The mounting clamour for a criminal investigation into Mr Tomlinson's death was met initially by silence from the Home Office. Jacqui Smith's subsequent statement was a model of neutrality. While Ms Smith, who has no operational control over the police, is doubtless limited in what she can say, her intervention may have struck critics as low key.
No such lack of passion applied on Tuesday when the Home Secretary mounted Operation Bathplug. In a tour of TV and radio stations, she explained again why she was quite right to furnish her family home at our expense. It is useless for Ms Smith to protest that she bought some (mostly unspecified) items with her own money. The Home Secretary's compendium of Hotpoint cookers, ceramic tiles and patio sets has branded her the Imelda Marcos of the Argos catalogue. Her splurge would be inexcusable at the best of times. Right now, it's an assault on public decency for the Home Secretary to recline on her freebie £575 armchair while the bailiffs hammer at voters' doors. Yes, she's unlucky that her details were leaked early. Yes, other senior politicians on both sides of the House will also be exposed. And yes, MPs should be better paid rather than boosting their income in ways not much more palatable than in 1782, when Edmund Burke advanced an anti-sleaze Bill aimed at "cutting off all those sources of influence which… have proved so fatal to this country".
But cashing in is not mandatory. No one is forcing duvet covers and stone sinks on our elected members, or insisting that backbench MPs flit around the world inspecting human rights depredations from the comfort of five-star spas. As scrupulous MPs (and there are many) could tell their colleagues, you do not need to be Aristotle to work out the ethics of expenses and "fact-finding" free trips. Bad rules do not justify bad conduct. If the system stinks, then so do its exploiters.
Gordon Brown is not one for the high life. His Scottish home, on the occasion I saw it, featured no suede scatter cushions or designer sofas. His frugal tastes may have blinded him to the mortal danger of recession sleaze. An inquiry due to report in the autumn will be far too late. While reshuffling Ms Smith would not unduly upset some colleagues ("She is nice but weak," says a fellow-minister), it would not bridge the growing chasm between the governing and the governed.
People feel helpless in the face of tainted authority. What are they meant to do? In the unlikely event that they took up smashing politicians' windows, they would have to foot the glaziers' repair bills. But most citizens don't hanker for revenge against ministers and bankers. They want humility, apologies and proof that the pain of recession is shared by all. Instead, they are being palmed off with platitudes and self-indulgence by an establishment in whom they have lost faith. Why, many wonder, should we believe that ministers are truthful about our economic future when they are so duplicitous on bathplugs? How can we rely on the police to protect us when Ian Tomlinson dies in sickening circumstances? "Trust us", the cry of authorities everywhere, has rarely sounded so hollow.
Good governance and the rule of law are the cornerstones of democracy and the glue of our fragile social contract. Britain will eventually emerge from financial chaos, but the legacy of recession may be a shattered nation, broken not – as David Cameron suggests – by those at the bottom of society, but by those at its apex.
The kinder future Mr Brown envisages, of caring capitalism, fewer nuclear arms, greener industries, civic cohesion and electric cars all round, is far from assured. Such laudable dreams risk being smashed not by a patient electorate which has made all the sacrifices required of it, but by a venal and unscrupulous establishment.
So remember Ian Tomlinson, strolling towards death in his Millwall shirt. Perhaps he believed a Home Secretary who pledged to keep people safe on the streets. Maybe he thought himself protected by all agents of law and order. If he did, he was mistaken. And so he ended his last walk home as a martyr of recession Britain and the symbol of trust betrayed.
