protestors surrounded thursday 16 june

It was a pleasant summers evening on Devonshire Green and after listening to the speeches and choir I decided to stretch my legs and go and see the folks sitting in the side road. I was immediately offered a very tasty vegan curry with rice and after listening to the samba for a while we all spontaneously decided to go on a march around the streets. This was pretty cool with a wide range of people, samba and chanting and our presence was made even more conscipuous by the heavily armoured large police escort. All’s going pretty peacefully when we are diverted down a side road, which was blocked by a serous looking crowd of coppers. Seeing we couldn’t go down there we turned around to find they had also blocked our exit. I was a bit confused now as the huge numbers of coppers, including the mounted section, could have directed us anywhere they liked. So why stop us and hem us in? I got more confused when they started sending in the snatch squads who seemed to be using some kind of ridiculous gang formation technique they had learned in a training course just to pull out a few individuals one at time.

The whole episode looked completely amaturish and heavy handed on the part of the police, and the hemming-in quite pointless. Indeed this was proved when after about an hour and a half the police had managed to form a cordon so all we could do was finish our walk round the block back to Devonshire Square. If they had been a bit more professional they could have done this from the start of the march and we’d have all been safely back on the green ten minutes!!

As a person somewhat above the average age of those on this march and without experience of direct action I can think of two explanations of the police actions. (Assuming that the police were fully trained and experienced and their commanding officers are highly capable). The first explanation is that they rose to the bait of the banners saying ‘Police Bastards’ etc. If they did then this shows a high level of immaturity on their part – did they not expect people to be upset at seeing young people being so aggressively arrested the previous night. As a mature and responsible adult you do not manage such a situation by overreacting to a few banners and chants.

The second explanation is that the police were using this as intimidation to deter those who might be considering protesting in Scotland. If so then it is simply another example of the various techniques that are being employed by the authorities to restrict our right to protest.

Or maybe the whole thing was simply a real world training exercise for the less experienced coppers given the high numbers of Met police there to give the training!

Whatever, it was nasty, intimidating and the police were violent. If I had any reservations about getting involved indirect action before last night, I don’t now! I at least thank the coppers for the valuable training they gave me.

See you in Scotland!