The National Criminal Intelligence Service blamed the increasingly sophisticated nature of football hooligans for the organised violence last weekend between fans of Millwall and Cardiff City. Rival bands of thugs are apparently prepared to co-operate by fixing venues for fights via the Internet. Information is exchanged in closed or open websites. Some even report the violence as it happens: “It’s kicking off right now as I speak”, wrote Paul Dodd, a particularly dopey hooligan known to cyber nerds and police alike. The police now say they surf for such websites, hoping to discover other planned attacks.

If so, they may have been stung into action by the City of London riot. The police say they were unprepared for the scale of protest on June 18th, in part because it was hard to gauge the number of possible participants. They later concluded that organisation via the Internet had helped to swell the number of rioters. Hundreds of different websites were used by protesters to organise the “Carnival against Capitalism”, and many still function. A typical one, “ Subversive Enterprises”, is based in the United States and claims to represent “a group of individuals who all happen to hate the current institutional system of capitalism, greed and consumerism”. “We are a network” they explain, “[but] we tend not to meet”.

The potential for organising violence or civil disobedience via the Internet is limited in Britain by the relatively confined access to cyberspace. As yet less than a fifth of the population have access to the net. But green campaigners, including protesters against genetically modified crops, are well represented on the net, with dozens of “planet”, “green” and “gene” campaigning sites in Britain alone. Some give instruction on how to “force targets into a position from which they must negotiate”. Conveniently, a huge number of such sites are listed in one directory, www.protest.net, which schedules campaigns for groups in much of the world, including Britain. This week, apparently, was designated for national action against burger bars. Perhaps someone should tell the police.