The biggest police operation [ 1 | 2 ] since the 1984-85 miners' strike was mounted in Derby to protect a G8 Environment Ministers Meeting between 15 and 19 March 2005. This involved orders under Section 13 of the Public Order Act to ban the holding of "public processions through the City of Derby" (funerals were exempted) for five days and then under Section 14 a protest was allowed on the 17 March which involved a "designated protest site of Derby Market Place", a time limit and a maximum number of 3,000 protestors.
Events on M17 started with a Critical Mass bicycle protest in the morning with around 40 people taking part, police arrested twelve cyclists, who were released on bail that night, however their bicycles have been kept "as evidence".
Around 100 protestors then gathered in the only place they were alowed to — the Market Place — and spent the afternoon hanging around, listening to some samba, eating snacks from Veggies and watching Bush and Blair get pied. The point of the protest was explained by a representative of Friends of the Earth, "We're trying to take this opportunity with the G8 Environment and Development Ministers meeting just outside Derby to send a direct message to those ministers, particularly about the rhetoric that's being used in terms of climate change, and actually trying to encourage them to take action rather than just talk about the issue — and also to stop pumping our tax-payers' money into new oil developments and actually look at real solutions to climate change."
The G8 Justice and Home Affairs ministers are due in Sheffield between 15 to 17 June 2005 and Sheffield Dissent has a g8-sheffield email list to discuss what protests might be organised — now we have an idea of what to expect...
Comments
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Einstein was right.
21.03.2005 06:22
~In Solidarity~
C.C.
Captain Crunch
Why so many cops?
21.03.2005 11:12
The explanation seems to be that the police over estimated the numbers of protesters. They expected 5000 people so they brought out 2000 cops.
I think this explanation is dubious to say the least. The term 'police intelligence' may be an oxymoron but the police are not so bad at estimating numbers at an event like this. They reckoned 10,000 for June 18th which was about right or at least only out by a factor of 2.
This estimate is out by a factor of 50 and anyone who knows anything about protests would have known that this was never going to be a massive event with 5000 people. It was midweek, not in a major city, and not particularly well advertised (say as compared to J18 or Birmingham Global Street party).
Now I'm sure part of the motivation was for the police to stamp on the protest, to make people feel scared and disempowered and make them not come out again. And of course it sends a message out the the wider public for the main G8 in Scotland. But they still didn't need 2000 cops to acheive that.
The cops do sometimes fuck up in terms of estimating numbers etc. but I've never seen it to such a big degree or on such an obvious case.
So the big question is why were their so many of them?
biscuit
Police number mystery
21.03.2005 13:03
I agree that the police were not expecting thousands of protestors -- look at this from two days before:
"Police said fewer than 500 activists were expected to attend."
Chris