IT'S never a pretty sight to see an unruly mob turn on gardai, demonising and taunting the men on whom we rely to risk their lives keeping the streets safe for us.

And this is just what we saw all week as the press laid into an Garda Siochana, based largely on reports and footage gathered not by objective observers but by interested parties. Much of the footage of the Battle of Dame Street that provoked such outrage came from the Independent Media Centre, an organisation sympathetic to Reclaim the Streets. The IMC is the group on whose website, indymedia.ie Garda Donal Corcoran was denounced in pictorial montages as a psychopath.

"Excellent," wrote one activist in response to the montage. "Can someone print up a few hundred of these for this evening?"

This evening being the peaceful protest at a main artery on Thursday rush hour at which gardai were not going to be provoked. The so-called eyewitness reports that the media carried unquestioningly last week came largely from protesters. It was easy to spot when it was a protester speaking because they were usually billed as Trinity students. Reclaim The Streets is the new Rag Week for Trinity students, dressed up as political activism.

Reclaim the Streets achieved their aims last Monday. Some got drunk and held up the traffic. And they achieved publicity, the central aim of any protest and the explicit stated aim of RTS's street parties. Anyone involved in protesting will tell you that the amount of headlines generated is contingent on causing conflict and confrontation, on blocking roads and causing the maximum amount of inconvenience and disruption.

Monday's "party" certainly achieved maximum disruption, and publicity beyond RTS's wildest imagination.

It's nice for RTS that they like to have parties on major thoroughfares at rush hour. It's nice for them that they are a non-hierarchical movement, with no leaders and thus no one to exercise any control.

It's not so nice for the majority of citizens, who RTS do not represent, who are hugely inconvenienced by this alleged reclamation of the streets.

Neither is it nice for the gardai who end up dealing with a motley crew of ill-disciplined protesters, with no idea where they intend to go next or what they intend to do. When an ill-disciplined mob with no clear aims attempts to block streets at random, splits into various factions and roams unchecked through the city centre, the gardai cannot stand idly by.

We want an Garda Siochana to protect us. Law and order has been one of the biggest issues in this election. We expect gardai to risk their lives protecting us from joyriders and drunken louts. We expect them to do the dirty job that none of the rest of us is willing to do.

We want security. But we don't want it to get messy. We want security lite, where the friendly bobby comes along, says "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello", taps the unruly mob on the shoulder and tells them to move on. We know the value of law and order but not the price. But of course it's not always as simple as that.

This is in no way intended to justify the actions of gardai but perhaps we should try to understand them. Everyone was a security expert last week and many of these instant experts were asking why gardai weren't properly trained to deal with what happened last Monday.

You have to wonder how you can train a human being, faced with being spat at and having missiles and abuse hurled at him, not to lose his temper. No one can guarantee that someone won't lose their rag, and sure enough a small minority of the cops seem to have lost it. There will be an inquiry and they will be dealt with according to the law. Indeed some have already been dealt with by the rough justice of thetabloids.

What about the unruly minority on the other side? What about the shower that one witness called the "yobbish element" in the "party", who precipitated the trouble with the gardai? No one will take responsibility for them.

RTS are non-hierarchical and were just having a party, man. They can't help it if some among their numbers get drunk and throw missiles at the cops. Because that's not what they're about, man, unlike the thousands of peaceful protests that occur every year in this country, where a voice is never raised in anger by the cops, never mind a baton. Last Monday wasn't another Rodney King. Neither was it another Bloody Sunday.

Indeed comparisons between the RTS people and those involved in the civil rights movement in the North were an insult to the latter. If the biggest oppression these people face is that they aren't allowed block the streets of Dublin, they have little to worry about.

There is a general election later this week. Reclaim the Streets or the Anti Globalisation Movement has not put forward any candidates. First, because they know they wouldn't be elected, and second, because they are against that boring system the rest of us call democracy. Much easier to have a party. That'll change the world. Ah grow up.