So you want a right to protest?
Today enjoyed a particularly peaceful tuition fees protest in my beautiful hometown of Bath - as quaint as the city itself - but have been more interested ultimately in what went on elsewhere. Here, the police were fine. Ten police officers watched 50 - 100 young people as we chanted and waved banners at the general direction of noone in particular, having been moved from outside the main council building. The police spent more time buying their tea than doing the kettling themselves.
What happened elsewhere. There have been unconfirmed reports of the use of tasers in Brighton, in Bristol police repeatedly used heavy handed tactics - if nothing particularly damaging -, and in London many were arrested merely for being in Trafalgar Square, having ‘not complied with a dispersal order’. The Met’s excuse? The ‘protesters arrived early’.
Ultimately protesters ran rings around the police - the scenes in London looked like a game of British bulldog - and all the protests had learned to avoid being kettled they had to move quickly. The game of cat and mouse goes on.
The thing that worries me most is the police’s inability to deal with larger groups of people. As soon as more than a couple of hundred people convene, the assumption is that a melee will start without intervention. In fact usually the intervention is the catalyst for the melee. The use of things such as Forward Intelligence Teams - gangs of policemen and protests that film protesters so they can be identified and targeted at a later date - are second guessing protesters, and shows the lack of trust in the British public. (n.b. check out ‘FIT Watch’ for great work countering and informing about these people, and also for to the minute updates from people actually in the protests)
The police are essential, and do a wonderful job - as they did today in Bath - but the tactics when dealing with larger groups of protests need serious revision.
