What Exactly Is The Matter With Me
Thanks to Chris Low for the photographs of the G20 protests which occurred in the City of London yesterday, and to those folk that participated throughout that day in the largely peaceful protest for a safer, cleaner and fairer global society. Reports below lifted from various media.
Protesters have stormed the Royal Bank of Scotland in London as thousands of people descended on the City ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders.
Demonstrators launched missiles and forced their way into the bank after clashes with police in the capital.
Nineteen people were arrested on Wednesday, while some police and protesters were injured in scuffles.
Climate change activists have pitched tents in the street, while anti-war campaigners are holding a rally.
The protests came as US President Barack Obama spoke of the “sense of urgency” needed to confront the financial crisis after he met Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Downing Street.
By Wednesday afternoon the prime minister’s spokesman said they were hoping to reach a successful conclusion to the summit.
At the height of the demonstrations, the police estimated there were up to 4,000 demonstrators in the City and officers cordoned off a number of streets.
The BBC’s Ben Brown said there had been an “increasingly ugly mood” in Threadneedle Street after protesters smashed RBS windows with missiles, including coins and computer keyboards, and entered the building. The branch had been closed already as a precautionary measure.
Mounted police and riot officers used shields to push demonstrators back and officers said they entered the RBS building just after 1400 BST “in support of building security”.
The £703,000 pension arrangement of RBS former chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, has sparked public anger.
An RBS spokesman said: “The safety of our employees and our customers is of paramount importance to us.”
However, by mid afternoon the BBC’s Danny Shaw said police sources believed the mood had changed, with the atmosphere becoming less tense.
Officers were on the look out for people who were “of interest”.
Earlier, officers were pelted with empty beer cans, fruit and flour outside the Bank of England as the crowd of demonstrators had attempted to reach a peaceful climate change protest in nearby Bishopsgate.
Hundreds of Climate Camp demonstrators – behind direct action protests at Heathrow Airport and power stations in North Yorkshire and Kent – pitched tents in protest against carbon markets.
The BBC’s Mark Georgiou said there was an “almost Glastonbury atmosphere” at the demonstration outside the European Climate Exchange, which featured “music and meditation”.
Several hundred anti-war demonstrators have also marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square from the US Embassy in central London.
The BBC’s Dominic Casciani said it had a “completely different mood” to the protests in the City, and demonstrators were in peaceful mood.
Earlier, protest groups under the G20 Meltdown banner had marched to the Bank of England in the City urging those who had lost their homes, jobs, savings or pensions to join them in following four “horsemen of the apocalypse” to “lay siege” to financial institutions.
Many City workers have dressed in casual clothes after banks and other institutions were warned they may be targeted.
Protester Daniel Blinkhorn, from Brighton, was among those marching from London Bridge station to the Bank. He said the G20 leaders had a “real opportunity to green the global economy”.
Housing association worker Tony Streeter told the BBC: “I’m here because I think people are angry about what’s going on in the world there’s too much greed.”
Scotland Yard said a total of 23 people had been arrested in connection with the protests, including four on Tuesday.
The four people were charged after officers were alerted to a group trying to break into a building in the Holborn area of central London, police said.
On Wednesday, police questioned demonstrators travelling in an armoured vehicle dressed in helmets and overalls.
Police say 11 people have been arrested on suspicion of possessing police uniforms and for road traffic offences.
A man died last night during the G20 protests in central London as a day that began peacefully ended with police saying bottles were thrown at police medics trying to help him.
The man had collapsed within a police cordon set up to contain the crowds who had assembled in central London and the City to protest over the G20 summit. There were 63 arrests on the day.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission was being notified last night. Scotland Yard said the alarm had been raised by a member of the public who spoke to a police officer on a cordon at the junction of Birchin Lane and Cornhill in the City.
He sent two medics through the cordon line and into nearby St Michael’s Alley where they found a man who had stopped breathing. They called for ambulance support at about 7.30pm and moved him back behind the cordon where they gave him cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
“The officers took the decision to move him as during this time a number of missiles – believed to be bottles – were being thrown at them”, said a police statement. The ambulance service took the man to hospital where he died.
A London ambulance spokesman said: “Our staff immediately took over the treatment of the patient and made extensive efforts to resuscitate him both at the scene and on the way to hospital.”
The directorate of public standards at both the Metropolitan and City of London police had been informed, the statement said. One protester at the scene said the man was in his 30s and died of natural causes, the Press Association news agency reported.
The man’s death ended a day in which the contrasting faces of British policing were on display in London.
The Met called in support from 30 forces across the country to create a 5,000-strong team of officers for at least six diverse demonstrations in the City of London and Trafalgar Square. Outside the Bank of England police horses and riot officers were pushed back by the sheer force of demonstrators – helmets were torn from officers’ heads and cans, fruit and flour rained down. In retaliation the police surged forward, cracking heads with batons, using pepper spray and CS gas, and sirens wailed all around.
Three minutes’ walk away, in Bishopsgate, smiling officers shared a joke with men and women pitching tents along the road, a family offered them chocolate brownies from an organic food stall and a few lads politely queued up outside the compost toilet tent.
But late last night there was a stand-off as officers moved to start to break up the climate camp that had been set up.
Violence spread as far as London Bridge, with riot police chasing groups of demonstrators, who responded with bottles and other missiles.
Commanders at the Met, who are said to be among the best public order officers in the world, insisted they would not let the city be brought to a standstill.
They used familiar tactics to trap 4,000 people into streets outside the Bank of England in a practice known as “kettling”, tightening the cordon when violence flared in one part of Threadneedle Street and a group of protesters, whose faces were covered, broke into the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Commander Bob Broadhurst, in charge of the operation, said his aim was to facilitate peaceful protest. But those peaceful demonstrators caught inside the cordon with no toilet facilities, and little water, questioned the idea that they were being allowed to exercise their right to march.
“The police should let us dribble out when we need to,” said June Rogers, a gardener from south London. “We’ve just come on a peaceful protest. We’ve got fire in our belly and we want to say something and be heard, we are just ordinary people but they made the situation worse.”
Jeannie Mackie, a barrister who had attended the climate camp as an observer, was penned in for two hours after police cordoned off both ends of Bishopsgate.
“I thought it was completely unnecessary,” she said.
“I was kept for two hours. Lines of police lined up with their batons and they were completely pumped up and looking to have a go. My feeling was everyone in there was peaceful but they wanted to clear them out.” Responding to the police use of the kettling technique she said that although the courts had ruled that it was legal, there had to be a good reason. “I asked one officer could I go and he said no – I might to and cause trouble. I giggled and said that wasn’t very likely and he said, ‘you can never tell with these people’.”
Scotland Yard said a cordon was used because missiles were being thrown at officers. It also said that portaloos and water had been moved in.
Earlier in the day demonstrations had started close to the Bank of England, storming a Royal Bank of Scotland branch, and baton-wielding police charging a sit-down protest by students.
Much of the protesting was peaceful, but some bloody skirmishes broke out as police tried to keep thousands of people in containment pens surrounding the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street.
Some buildings in the City had been boarded up in anticipation of trouble, with staff warned to work from home or dress down.
As protesters began to gather, after 11am, some City workers were seen waving £10 notes at them from office windows.
After the charge against the sit-down protest at students, there were complaints that officers had been heavy handed.
“When people surrounded RBS, I could understand police tactics,” said Jack Bright, 19. “We were sat down, trying to have a peaceful protest, but they started whacking us.”
Riot police broke down the doors of two squats in East London yesterday as they hunted for those involved in the violence outside the Bank of England during Wednesday’s protests.
Police said that they had made 111 arrests so far in connection with the march and were happy with the way that Operation Glencoe had gone.
It emerged that the man who collapsed and died during the protest on Wednesday evening had been returning from work. Ian Tomlinson, 47, was not involved in the march.
When the protesters met in the City of London at the Bank of England and pushed towards the Royal Bank of Scotland police were initially overrun but quickly regained control.
Officers have been accused of heavy-handedness after hitting protesters with their truncheons and penning in demonstrators outside the Bank of England.
Commander Simon O’Brien, of the Metropolitan Police, said of the decision to pen in the crowds: “If there had been no disorder we would have allowed people to move more freely. But peaceful protests were hijacked by a small number of people. We were pragmatic, we took a lot and I don’t accept that officers have to stand there being punched without any response.”
Climate Camp activists said that the police over-reacted as they evicted them from a protest in Bishopsgate. A spokeswoman said: “We said we would stay peacefully overnight but by 1.30am hundreds of riot cops forced their way through while protesters sat with their hands in the air saying, ‘This is not a riot’. We were forced out and the police used dogs. It was scary.”
More than 20 people were arrested during the raids on the two squats yesterday. Police used battering rams to break down the doors of a squat on Earl Street, near Liverpool Street station, which had been barricaded for several days, and led 70 people out of the building in handcuffs. The second address was in nearby Whitechapel.
Three teenagers and a man were charged last night in connection with the storming of RBS. Mindaugas Lenartavicius, 21, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today.
dan i
April 3, 2009 at 7:26 amhmmmm looks like police tactics most people have seen before – contain and provoke. As long as there is some violence somewhere the government and newspapers have their story and the point of the protests is lost to most people on the outside.
Makes you wanna sit down and cry
andus
April 3, 2009 at 12:50 pmI wonder what would have happened if people on the demo had made citizens arrests of the people who smashed up the RSB, This is the way to expose them.
andus
April 3, 2009 at 2:43 pmExcellent write up BTW, more info about the demo here that anywhere else, first class photo’s, this is more like it, KYPP enters the present. 11 out of 10 for this one.
chris
April 3, 2009 at 7:09 pmQUOTE: I wonder what would have happened if people on the demo had made citizens arrests of the people who smashed up the RSB, This is the way to expose them.
Not quite sure I understand the logic in that, mate. I just found it strange the way all the photographers were left to snap away with impunity, knowing their film will see some folk get sent down for very long stretches.
Wednesday was an utterly and totally depressing day. A total flop and wash out. 4,000 folk cordoned in by the cops for three hours; climate camp systematically battered and one protestor dead. And absolutely FUCK ALL happened about it. Not that it really should come as any surprise – this being Great Britain, after all. But still…
chris
April 3, 2009 at 7:57 pmThe strongest impression , and perhaps the saddest aspect of this day, was that it WAS quite overwhelmingly ‘a peaceful demonstration’ – with those intent of ‘trouble-making’ being a tiny minority.
This is one of the first demos/protests I think I have ever attended where I can say that in all honesty. An impression validated by the simple fact that not a single one of the McDonalds or Starbucks on any of the streets everyone dispersed down after being let out of the police cordon was attacked.
Conversely, it was also the demo/protest where I witnessed the old bill acting in the most aggressive manner, facing little or no opposition from folk clearly shocked and terrified by their totally ‘over the top’ approach to what was absolutely ZERO provocation in the first place.
andus
April 4, 2009 at 10:45 amYeah Chris, the police wanted violence or more to the point the authoritys did. several obvious reasons for that.
My citizens arrest theory, basically, what would have happened if people had jumped on those violent protesters and made citizens arrests, and then tried to hand them over to the police, what would the police have done, i reckon either nothing or they would have probably arrested the person doing the citizens arrest, and this would have exposed the police tactics of wanting to provoke violence.
I am not saying that people should do that, but its interesting to theorize on what the police reaction to that would have been.
Quote. I just found it strange the way all the photographers were left to snap away with impunity, knowing their film will see some folk get sent down for very long stretches.
Some people are damn idiotic. In Birmingham in the early 90s, hunt sabs were convicted because one prat amongst them kept a diary of events! What happened, what they did, names etc !!!!.
Who needs infiltrators and staged false flag events with people like that involved.
slyme68
April 4, 2009 at 12:49 pmanyone still buzzin’ could get to the occupied visteon factory in enfield. http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1037
a factory in this country hasn’t been occupied for a very long time. this is seizure of the means of production and should be applauded and supported as a much more effective direct action that appealing to world leaders to behave.
andus
April 4, 2009 at 3:04 pmFair play to them. ‘singing a song in the morning as we lock the boss in the lavatory, taking charge of the factory we work autonomously’ superb. Long live the world revolution.
andy x
April 6, 2009 at 3:53 pmMuch as i was delighted by the RBS taking a bashing and lots of more conservative friends saying how they found it a highlight, even for one to say that he watched it three times on different news channels, it all seemed very stage managed to me with the police letting protesters give a symbolic bash at the bank without any attempt to stop them, and their seemed to be more media involved than anarchists!
Coupled with this seeing a previous report on tv of a supposed anarchist leader/mastermind (a anthropologist professor!) being interviewed on tv stating how they we’re gonna “turn the lights out in london” etc, it occurred to me then that he may be a MI5 set up, so was it all stage managed? , here is a eyewitness account of said “Bank Bashing”
Eddie StClair Says:
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I was very close to the incident where the windows of the RBS branch were broken on Wednesday having wandered up Bartholomew Lane to try and see, out of curiosity, how the protest was progressing.
Initially I was able to get up onto the junction with Threadneedle street where the crowd spread back from the Bank of England. I was straight away quite struck by the number of photographers with professional equipment that formed part of the crowd. Things seemed peaceful if a little animated, quite natural for those people who were there to protest.
There was quite soon some action from the police from the back of the crowd towards Bank tube that forced the crowd where I was standing forwards and I ended up stepping away back sideways again down the top of Bartholomew Lane. Things seemed to be calming down when there was the sound of quite loud thumping. A couple of people with hoods and black lower face coverings had started kicking against the door of RBS on the corner. Very soon they had moved down to the windows on Bartholomew Lane and broken one.
It struck me immediately as being almost theatrical in that it would have been much more natural for them to have attacked the Threadneedle Street windows that were largely still sheltered by the main body of the crowd. Their activity on Bartholomew Lane was quite obvious to the line of police at the lower end of the road only a 80 yards or so away with only a relatively thin scattering of the mainly curious like myself in between. I immediately assumed as the vandalism continued that the police would be moving in as there was little to delay them, sure enough within a minute a whole line of police horses had appeared at the bottom of the lane as if on cue.
I decided at this point to take some shelter from the inevitable advance behind some building scaffolding that ran handily down the side of the street, but nothing happened. The intermittent sounds of smashing glass continued for at least a quarter of an hour with little between the incident and the police lines, now reinforced with some riot shield and helmeted foot soldiers, other than the attendant scrum of photographers. The location, away from the main body of the crowd, making it a very convenient photo-op. The press pictures I’ve seen of this activity are quite accurate in that they show very few “demonstrators” there and simply a large scrum of photographers trying to capture the images.
I became quite amused at this point as the whole thing had a definite air of fakeness about it. So much so in fact that I wandered up and took a couple of pictures from behind the media throng myself with my mobile phone, along with some of the other curious bystanders.
Finally after 15 minutes when the RBS assault seemed to run its course, the police started a very slow and deliberate deployment up the 80 or so yards of Bartholomew Lane, no attempt at all to apprehend the perpetrators, just a preparation for further “kettling” in of the crowd. I managed to slip out just before they refused further exit, which as it turns out saved me 3 plus hours of being denied my freedom.
So make of that what you will. Initially I thought the police were displaying a cool headed caution before making their move, but as the minutes ticked away it became obvious they had no intention of making what would have been a fairly straightforward advance in an orderly fashion up the street to at least end the incident, if not actually send in some officers more aggressively to catch the perpetrators. As mentioned, there was little but a scrum of photo-journalists to stop them.
So I was interested to come across this article. From the point of view of an eyewitness this thesis would explain a number of rather incongruent things about the incident, which received a disproportionately large amount of media coverage including the front page of the BBC website. A very misleading impression being sent out not only of the demonstration as a whole but the actual rather pantomime nature of the incident itself.
————–
It was noted by many people that the RBS was left unboarded but other places we’re boarded up!
andus
April 6, 2009 at 5:01 pmNot sure what thread to put this link on, but this is as good as any, this is a very interesting experiment, I was stunned at the end of it.
http://personalgrowthcourses.net/video/perceptual_experiment
chris
April 7, 2009 at 4:20 pmNo.
Chris Knight, raving fruitbat though he may be, has been involved with various left and @ groups for the past 30 years or so.
‘lights out london’ was launched as Earth Hour, originates in Australia and the campaign has been going for years. http://www.earthhour.org/home/
that ‘account’ above is just fanny batter. The reason the photographers & press were outside the RBS building was that everyone and their grandmother’s cat knew it was the ‘prime target’ for the City protest. To say otherwise is like suggesting it conspiratorial to have photographers behind the goal posts at a football game as that implies some sinister prior knowledge a goal was going to be scored. leaving the RBS building open as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ to be attacked was simply an astute and pragmatic decision on the part of the police, as validated by the rest of the day’s (NON) events.
and as posted before those responsible for the RBS attack *WERE* arrested. in fact were up in court the following day: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090402/tuk-g20-four-charged-over-rbs-violent-pr-45dbed5.html
no doubt with further arrests to be made once perpetrators are identified from photos and film.
alistairliv
April 7, 2009 at 9:34 pmChris Knight is not a raving fruitbat. At least he wasn’t when he wrote Blood Relations : Menstruation and the Origins of Culture which Tony Puppy gave me (signed by the Prof. Knight) a few years ago. It was the first book I had read which made sense of ‘kinship lineages’ and Levi-Strauss.
It also challenges the ‘killer ape’ theory of human evolution with an alternative ‘sex-strike’ theory.
alistairliv
April 7, 2009 at 10:07 pmThe Guardian have got video evidence of the man who died at the G20 protest being shoved to the ground by a policeman. Also on BBC, Telegraph, Times, ITV, Sky news and Daily Mail websites
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/ian-tomlinson-g20-death-video
andy x
April 7, 2009 at 10:56 pmthanx 4 the heads up chris on mr knight looks like hes in trouble!
An anarchist professor who warned that bankers would be “hanging from lampposts” during next week’s G20 protests was tonight suspended by his university.
Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology at the University of East London, will be investigated over alleged misconduct after he appeared to incite violence.
Mr Knight, who is organising protests under the banner G20 Meltdown, told BBC Radio 4’s PM on Wednesday night: “We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred from lampposts on April Fool’s Day and I can only say let’s hope they are just effigies.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/G20/article5982908.ece
alistairliv
April 7, 2009 at 11:02 pmChris Knight is a Marxist not an anarchist.
chris
April 8, 2009 at 12:40 amNo, by all accounts Knight is a nice guy and evidently highly intelligent.
However his belicose and rather ‘optimistic’ pronouncements before G20 were pretty snooker-loopy. I don’t know how he ended up in the position where he became the media mouthpiece for the anarchist protests, but perhaps it is simply because he has his own, un-affiliated (to best of my knowledge) group is why he wasn’t reigned in a bit by more media savvy ‘comrades’.
PS: Thanks for posting up that Guardian link. I saw quite a bit of that sort of stuff last wednesday; the brass-band woman I mentioned before for one.
Sad thing is this chap has lost his life in a completely unprovoked attack and the worst the hyped up shitbag who pushed him will get is suspension from duty on full pay and a slap on the wrist.
alistairliv
April 8, 2009 at 8:14 am“Correcting the media narrative on G20 protests”
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/2009/04/correcting-the-media-narrative-of-the-g20-protests-on-april-1-2009/
On Chris Knight’s role as media mouthpiece_
1. From memory in 1996/7 Chris and the East London University Radical Anthropology Group were involved with “Reclaim the Future” – a spin-off fusion between Reclaim the Streets ( which came out of anti M11 road protest) and Liverpool Dockers campaign. Some wonderfully surreal ideas came out of this – like a full moon sex strike in support of the Liverpool Dockers.
But Chris’ angle was a bit too anthropological to get media coverage back then.
2. Fastforward to February (?) 2009 police predict a ‘Summer of Hate’ involving middle class riots against bankers etc… followed up by similar police predictions for G20 involving “groups which have not been active since the nineties” (probably based on Ian Bone’s blogsite) …
By this time Chris/ Radial Anthropologists/ Reclaim the Future have morphed into “Government by the Dead” – mixing Marx’s ‘capitalism is dead labour’ and hunter/gatherer style ancestor worship.
3. In search of things to be outraged by ahead of G20, Chris and his colleagues website G20 Meltdown was “discovered” and Chris interviewed. In a GRUNDY MOMENT a mild mannered reporter asks Chris to say something outrageous. Being of the pre-punk generation and in the tradition of Mick Farren’s UK “White Panthers” / USA YIPPY’s “LSD in the water supply”…
… Chris obliges with the necessary shock horror statements (minus the Pistols swearing ) about bankers etc. “Its a wrap”
4. Cue outrage, cue fury, cue “Professor living in £1 million house wants to hang all rich people” Blah blah bah – but amplified through multi-media megaphones. “In the future everyone will be infamous … for a 1 minute 23 second sound bite”
Pete
April 10, 2009 at 9:07 pmThis bloke can speak for himself. We all have our own voices.
PeteW
April 10, 2009 at 9:22 pmFor Pete’s sake, that Pete is this Pete not the other Petes 🙂
andus
April 15, 2009 at 6:41 pmThere is only 3 ‘sakes’, for gods sake, for fucks sake, and for petes sake.
andus
April 17, 2009 at 4:53 pmFor Christs sake I’ve missed the fourth one out, any offers on 5.
Ian S
April 19, 2009 at 12:12 amFor heaven’s sake . . .
alistairliv
April 19, 2009 at 2:59 pmGoogle news now has 1887 stories on this. Here is the latest -from BBC.
IPCC urges crowd control debate
The head of the police complaints watchdog has urged a debate on crowd control as he prepares to give evidence to MPs following the G20 police row.
Nick Hardwick has questioned in the Observer why some officers apparently removed identity numbers from uniforms. The head of the Independent Police Complaints Commission also said police were “servants” not “masters”. He will attend the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday after the referral of three G20-related cases.
In relation to his concerns over some officers suspected of removing their identification numbers, Mr Hardwick said: “I think that raises serious concerns about the frontline supervision.
“ They [the police] have to respond to the fact that they are going to be watched, there is going to be this evidence of what they have done ” Nick Hardwick, IPCC boss
“Why was that happening, why did the supervisor not stop them?
“What does that say about what your state of mind is? You were expecting trouble?”
He also said the number of people who had filmed the protests on their mobile phones was proving a key factor in helping the IPCC determine whether complaints made against the police had any legitimacy.
The latest footage, released by Camp for Climate Action protesters at the London G20 demonstrations, shows a police officer striking a man, identified as IT worker Alex Cinnane. Mr Cinnane, 24, is barged with a shield on the side of his head in the film, shown on the Sunday Times website. The video, which was edited before it was released, does not show Mr Cinnane making any threatening behaviour towards the police officer.
Mr Hardwick told the Observer: “What’s been important with all these pictures is we have got such a wide picture of what happened. “I think that is challenging the police. They have to respond to the fact that they are going to be watched, there is going to be this evidence of what they have done.” He also said that typical complainants of police behaviour were from middle-class backgrounds, who did not previously have a jaundiced view of the police.
“If you are Mr and Mrs Suburban who have a good view of the police and think they do a good job, and they stop you and swear at you, then you are shocked and you complain.”
The Camp for Climate Action claimed thousands of peaceful protesters were attacked without warning.
Frances Wright, a lawyer acting for the group, said: “What has happened has demonstrated the importance of protesters watching the police at least as much as the police watch them during protests.” She added that officers should be legally required to wear large, football-player-style numbers on the front and back of their uniforms, to cut the risk of officers concealing their identity.
An IPCC spokesman confirmed Mr Hardwick would attend the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday to answer MPs’ questions. The police tactic of “kettling”, or containing demonstrators, is expected to be among the subjects discussed. Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Denis O’Connor, is also scheduled to appear.
Newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson died after being pushed over by police on 1 April and film footage also showed an officer hitting Nicola Fisher, 35, from Brighton, across the face with his hand and on her leg with a baton on 2 April. BBC Home Affairs correspondent, June Kelly, warned that fresh controversial images could still emerge.
She said: “This is the third case the Met has now referred to the IPCC. With so many cameras out there more footage could emerge in the coming days.”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/8006897.stm
Published: 2009/04/19 12:39:07 GMT
© BBC MMIX
jim v
April 21, 2009 at 12:12 amMiners Strike….police brutality,
Travellers in the Beanfield …police brutality,
Do you really think anyone will be found accountable…2009?
jim v
April 21, 2009 at 12:47 amYou fill in the years of brutality against opposition in the UK.
The police are not the enemy but merely a tool.
This has and always will be a Class War.
Andus
May 10, 2009 at 4:15 pmThe Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009
G20 police ‘used undercover men to incite crowds’
MP demands inquiry into Met tactics at demo
* Jamie Doward and Mark Townsend
* The Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009
* Article history
Police and protesters clash in London on 1 April 2009
Police and protesters clash in London on 1 April 2009. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA
An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament’s joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.
“When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, ‘There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'” Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.
Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. “He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable,” Amos said. “Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked.”
Amos added: “He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up.”
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has received 256 complaints relating to the G20 protests. Of these, 121 have been made about the use of force by police officers, while 75 relate to police tactics. The IPCC said it had no record of complaints involving the use of police agents provocateurs. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “We would never deploy officers in this way or condone such behaviour.”
The use of plain-clothes officers in crowd situations is considered a vital tactic for gathering evidence. It has been used effectively to combat football hooliganism in the UK and was employed during the May Day protests in 2001.
Brake said he intends to raise the allegations with the Met’s commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, when he next appears before the home affairs select committee. “There is a logic having plain-clothes officers in the crowd, but no logic if the officers are actively encouraging violence, which would be a source of great concern,” Brake said.
The MP said that given only a few people were allowed out of the corralled crowd for the five hours he was held inside it, there should be no problem in investigating the allegation by examining video footage.
alistairliv
May 10, 2009 at 5:45 pmSaw that story. Most interesting.
chris
May 12, 2009 at 5:56 pmDon’t believe a word of it. You always get these daft stories after any demo. Kind of like having ‘agent provocateurs’ in pubs on new year’s eve to ‘encourage’ folk to get drunk.
Must have been about the only demo i have been to in my life where i DIDN’T see anyone throwing any bottles at the police.
And hundreds of folk got out of the police corall, as anyone there at the time would have seen. I know someone who just flashed a library card and another girl who just showed her security pass from her workplace in Italy.
Andus
May 13, 2009 at 3:17 pmMate the article doesn’t say that people threw bottles at the police, it alleges that bent coppers tried to incite people to throw bottles. How is whenever you read anything you always seem to read different sentences than everyone else. To quote.
‘There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,’”
Read it again mate.
Chris
May 15, 2009 at 1:55 amAndus, baby, perhaps you misunderstand me.
I know exactly what the article says. What I am saying is I DO NOT BELIEVE FOR ONE MINUTE the unerringly predictable and tired allegation that:
‘There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,’”
I just detest that posturing left-liberal line more every time I hear it. As it emasculatingly suggests that rather than political confrontation being the result and an expression of people being pissed off and angry at the situation they are in and the bullshit they are fed, without there being sinister stateist agents to provoke and incite such deviant and uncharacterictic actions they would otherwise never dream of attacking the old bill or financial institutions, just as Kinnock declared Orgreave “totally alien to the temprement and tradition of the working class”.
It’s always a load of fanny batter mate.
alistairliv
May 15, 2009 at 6:53 pmThere is a 19 second video clip here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/15/g20-protest-plainclothes-police
which shows plain clothes (casual) police -with batons – in amongst straight police at G 20
Andus
May 15, 2009 at 8:01 pmWell well well well well. And there they are. of course Chris will just say its a made up film and the Guardian spent hours in photo shop doctoring it up, with no apparent motive.
Chris
May 15, 2009 at 8:48 pmor then again he may not because Chris was talking about the completely separate allegation of ‘agent provocateurs inciting the crowd’ not the fucking existance and deployment of plain clothes police which as everyone knows you get at pretty much any large public event and everywhere from the high street, to the football to trooping of the colour.
“well well well well well. and there they are.” Yes! WOW! incredible isn’t it? Coppers…In plain clothes!!! Who could ever have imagined such a thing on a demo where thousands of anarchists had threatened to ‘Smash The City’ ?!! It’s like Nazi Germany all over again I tell you!
I saw loads of plain clothes coppers at the City G20 demo. Funny as fuck seeing them trying not to look conspicuous. I even amused myself by going up to the odd one and saying “excuse me officer, what time are you gonna let us out?”
If, of course, the Guardian has any footage of identifiable police officers acting as ‘agent provocateurs’ that would be relevant to this debate and I would regard it as so. The above link, unfortunately, is not 🙂
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