Britain police force

The Geneva Protocol had laid down firm controls over the use of gas in war. But the use of chemical weapons, like tear gas, by domestic police forces was a matter purely for national governments. Both the United States and Britain had established factories to manufacture CN gas after the First World War, and the British were soon using the gas against rioters in the colonies. The weapon which replaced it, and was used in Vietnam, CS gas,55 provides a nearperfect example of the way in which British chemical warfare research, despite its commitment to purely defensive uses, came to be applied to war. 

Historical accounts of military conflicts since the First World War lead us to believe that the use of chemical weapons was non-existent for legal or ethical reasons, or for fear of retaliation. Matthew Meselson, a noted biochemist, stated, There have been only two instances of verified poison gas warfare since 1925. .. in Ethiopia and Yemen. 5 However, a preponderance of evidence exists to indicate that there have been numerous instances of chemical warfare use in military conflicts since 1918. In 1919, in India, stocks of phosgene and mustard gas were sent out from Britain for use on the frontier, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) is alleged to have used gas bombs against the Afghans in 1920. By 1925 the French and Spanish were employing poison gas in Morocco, and it had become clear that chemical warfare had found a new role, as a tool by which major powers could police rebellious territories. 

Protective helmets like these are being used not only by the British military but also by other armed forces overseas, as well as for police riot-protection duties in Britain and other countries in Europe. 

The gases supplied were DM, CS and CN. The first was an arsenical gas dating from the First World War, while the other two were riot control agents developed by Britain and the US respectively. Of the three, CS came to be the most widely used. In the March 1965 statement, gas was said to have been used three times twice in December 1964 and once in January 1965. It was pointed out that the gases were similar to those used by British security forces in Cyprus in 1958 and by the US police in quelling face riots in 1963 and 1964. Britain confirmed that CS had been used in Cyprus and in Singapore, and that it had been exported to a number of countries. ... 

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