The worst case of a UK government using the army to kill its own tax payers I can think of was the Bloody Sunday Massacre in the Bogside, in which 26 died.
Compare this with Syria where reportedly 4000 have died in this Arab spring.
I've read reports that previous uprisings have been put down with even more bloodshed, between 10,000 and 25,000 people reported killed or injured.
Just put that in a European context. Even 400 people killed by the state for protesting in anywhere within a greater Europe would be cataclysmic, let alone 4000 deaths.
It seems like the west is inured to large numbers of dead when it happens east of Rome, yet these are people like me and maybe you who are absolutely determined to see change for the better.
The threat of Islamist Fundamentalists filing any power vacuum is a good scare tactic not apparently borne out by events across the rest of Arab north Africa.
Sir George Cayley