The action, politics and policing of protest in London.

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Pre-royal wedding raid on Heathrow camp makes little sense

Of the raids carried out by police the day before the royal wedding, one stood out as particularly strange. As well as squats in Camberwell and Hackney, the Met also chose last Thursday to visit a camp in Sipson near Heathrow airport called Transition Heathrow.

Transition Heathrow stands out because the camp has so little obvious relation to the royal wedding or the protests that have recently caught police attention. The camp is a “transition town”, where the occupants grow their own produce and try to live a carbon free life. It is in part a protest against the proposed building of a third runway at Heathrow, and was born out of many of direct action climate campaigns that have provided some of the most high profile protest in the UK. However, it is also an attempt to provide an example of living differently. By all accounts Transition Heathrow is on friendly terms with its neighbours

Used with permission from Transition Heathrow

, and the camp also has the support of local MP John McDonnell.

Yet on Thursday 28 April, at roughly 7:15, around 40 TSG officers turned up at Transition Heathrow. While 20 of the Met special operations unit battered in the front door, the rest scaled a rear wall. People were woken and the place was searched. Two members of the camp were detained, one cuffed, it seems because they were too slow in getting up.

According to those at the camp, the police warrant said they were looking for items to be used for criminal damage. They didn’t find any, and after a couple of hours the police left having made no arrests.

The targeting of Transition Heathrow seems to back up the police claims that timing of the raids had nothing to do with the royal wedding. Yet it is strange that police would choose to target this location just 24 hours before their biggest operation in years. McDonnell is among the MPs who have questioned the raids in parliament, saying they appeared to be some form of “pre-emptive strike”.

Transition Heathrow resident Joe Rake, 20, says the raid was “pretty bizarre”, and that those living at the camp are “completely baffled about why they chose to raid a community garden”.

However, he says the timing suggests there must be some connection between the raid and the royal nuptials, whether police thought something was being planned at the camp, or were merely using the event as an excuse.

“It’s got to be about the royal wedding, but no one here was talking about the wedding at all before the raid.”

“It was completely disproportionate…yet another example of political persecution.”

Why did the police decide to target an entirely peaceful movement campaigning about the climate? Raids and arrests on protesters planning to make a point while William and Kate got married may be  worrying from a civil liberties perspective, but at least they appear to follow some logic. The raid on Sipson suggests that either police intelligence is lacking, or that in the current climate even the mildest signs of dissent are liable to invite police harassment.

Posted by  |  May 2, 2011 | Categories: Civil Liberties, Climate Change, TSG | Tags: , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Preemptive policing: royal weddings and the facade of national celebration

The police operation to curtail protests at today’s wedding has increasingly come to resemble the actions of an authoritarian regime trying to scrub out any image of dissent before a major event draws the focus of the world upon them.

The raids and arrests at five addresses across London early yesterday morning were the first evidence of the promised crack-down. The Met claims that the raids were merely an attempt to gather evidence about disorder at the TUC march last month. However the targets and timing suggest otherwise and there are reports of other raids across London last night.

But the police have not just been raiding squats looking for ‘anarchists’. Charlie Veitch, a well known video activist who has only ever conducted peaceful protest, was arrested yesterday. An email from his girlfriend reveals he was arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Veitch had told the police of his intention to protest at the wedding peacefully, and was imprisoned for his courtesy.

In addition the three organisers of the “Zombie Wedding” which was to take place today, and feature a mock execution of Prince Andrew have all been arrested on a similar pretext.

Meanwhile, the organisers of a large-scale peaceful protest planned to take place along the route of the wedding were warned that any form of mass protest would be illegal inside the security zone around Westminster.

The group’s statement on Facebook is a lesson in careful wording, designed to encourage protest without falling foul of the legal prohibitions in place today. Nonetheless, individual attempts to get anywhere near the route of the wedding with the intention of protesting will be made very difficult by the huge cordon of private security around Westminster and St James’ Park.

That the wedding should be heavily stage managed is no surprise, all national events are. However the tactics that have surrounded this wedding are more troubling. There seems to be a studious and organised attempt to curtail expressions of public feeling that don’t fit within the framework of patriotic celebration and affirmation of the status quo. Miles away from the Royal Wedding the only open expression of dissent was permitted, a republican street party was licensed in Red Lion Square Holborn, safely away from cameras that might broadcast this minor interruption of the Monarchist narrative.

The wedding has apparently been saved from any embarrassing displays of dissent by heavy-handed tactics and pre-emptive strikes reminiscent of China’s careful stage-managing of the Olympics in 2008. If the government is prepared to go to such great lengths to keep protest out of the limelight for a royal wedding, what will they do next year when London hosts its own Olympics? Despite the paroxysm of patriotism expressed by rightist commentators, one wonders how the event can legitimately be viewed as an expression of national unity and celebration when such aggressive incursions upon civil liberties where required to maintain the facade.

Posted by  |  April 29, 2011 | Categories: Civil Liberties, Democracy, Marches, Non-Violence, Police, Royals | Leave A Comment »

Police violence and political policing

The news that the Metropolitan police have decided to press charges against (among others) 20 year old student Alfie Meadows for violent disorder has caused outrage. Meadows was hospitalised and had to receive major surgery for bleeding on the brain following a violent assault with a police baton during the third student demo on the 9th of December 2010. As well as displaying a callous disregard for the consequences of their own heavy handed actions this  forms a pattern of police persecution and partisanship which is deeply troubling in a democracy.

Alfie Meadows has been named as one of thirteen individuals to be tried for violent disorder and criminal damage. The move has aroused suspicion that the Met are attempting to discredit a key witness in the IPCC investigation into their actions on that day. It also can’t have escaped the attention of commentators that this move falls shortly after damning evidence of violence and dishonesty from the police relating of the death of Ian Tomlinson in April 2009. The reputation of the police force in general and the Met in particular is at a distinctly low-ebb among much of the public following a series of protests in which they have been seen to act in an extremely violent and provocative manner, charging teenagers on horseback, sending protestors to hospital (or rather refusing to send them) with brain damage, kettling schoolchildren for hours in sub-zero conditions and dragging young men out of their wheelchairs and across the ground, all the while engaging in acts of breath-taking deceit.

It is natural for an individual or institution facing such this kind of damage to attempt to protect and improve their reputation. However, for a group which is granted the overwhelming monopoly on use of coercive force – both physical and legal – to engage in cynical tactics and gross dishonesty belies the very reputation it seeks to maintain. If a group is allowed to beat civilians round the head, detain them for hours on end, snatch them from their homes and put them at risk of long term incarceration it doesn’t seem too much to expect them to be a little whiter than white in deploying such powers. In fact no one expects the Met to be perfect, but we do at least expect them to behave honourably and honestly when their mistakes and misdemeanours are investigated.

These actions are troubling enough, for those concerned with civil liberties and the right to protest. However, in the last few years the Met has also demonstrated an alarming, openly political edge to its repression. The policing of pro-Palestine marches for instance, have witnessed extremely brutal repression on the day. Often those who attended were subsequently snatched in dawn raids months later in a move that seemed deliberately designed to deter young Muslim citizens from engaging in their democratic right to protest; this tactic was then taken up by the judiciary, who meted out disproportionately harsh sentencing to the accused.  Similarly, infiltration of environmental groups and others that employ direct action, all of which have been classified and treated as “extremists”, and the arrest, last month of UKUncut activists who had been assured they could go free. All of these examples imply the Met considers its remit to extend far beyond maintenance of order and facilitation of peaceful protest, and now includes the active defence of the status quo against those who seek to challenge or change it.

Posted by  |  April 27, 2011 | Categories: Civil Liberties, Cuts, Fees, Marches, Police, Protest, Riots, Students, TSG | Leave A Comment »

Court rules against Climate Camp kettle but kettling still legal

Last week’s high court decision that Police tactics at 2009’s climate camp were illegal has been hailed as a victory for civil rights campaigners and the protest movement in general. Yet the significance of the judgement could be overplayed. The court’s decision did not go as far as civil liberties groups would like, passing up the opportunity to engage in a truly radical shake-up of policing and settling instead to allow the police to carry on much as before, though perhaps a little nicer and with an extra eye on for regulations.

The court has held back from declaring the use of kettling itself to be illegal and the Met have subsequently reaffirmed their commitment to the use of the tactic where they consider it necessary. This judgement of course only applies to the policing of the 2009 climate camp protest. Nonetheless, it has inevitably been interpreted in the light of the student protests that convulsed the capital at the end of 2010, which saw the highly controversial tactic deployed for hours at a time, often in dangerous situations and in icy conditions.

Though the Met have defiantly vowed to continue to deploy kettling where they see fit the recent anti-cuts demo notably did not witness large scale kettles deployed. Merely the threat of its use was sufficient to dramatically raise the temperature of the protest however, as Liberty – who provided legal observers and stewards on the day – concluded in a recent report.

This isn’t the final word on kettling. The tactic is being challenged in the European Court of Human Rights. But until a decision is reached the police will continue to use it. With this in mind, the court must be considered to have missed a valuable opportunity to effect more radical change in policing. Despite paying lip service to the civil right to protest, the Met has regularly shown itself willing to employ extremely coercive and violent means to control protests in the two years since the climate camp incident. The knowledge that they retain the prerogative to employ this hugely resource-hungry, expensive and provocative tactic will continue to greatly raise the temperature of future protests at a time when tempers are already running high due to economic insecurity and government austerity. It seems likely this will lead to more frequent, more violent clashes between protesters and the police which will be used in turn to justify more aggressive, more restrictive crowd control tactics. In allowing the police to retain the right to kettle, but rebuking them for excessive use of force the Court has essentially handed the met a stick and asked them to play nicely with it. A truly progressive move would have been to take the stick away altogether.

Posted by  |  April 20, 2011 | Categories: Civil Liberties, Marches, Police, Progressive, Protest, TSG | Leave A Comment »

Anti-cuts Movement Extends Range of Targets to Newspapers

Protesters targeted the Daily Mail offices today as part of the third National Day of Action Against Benefit Cuts. Aside from some strongly worded slogans attacking the Mail for its line on disability benefits the protest, attended by around 40 people, was entirely peaceful. Chants of Nazi Scum and references to the Mail’s Pre-second world war support for the blackshirts were reeled out, as were a few left wing chants that “the enemy is profit” that seemed ill-suited to the theme of the occasion. The crowd was largely older people engaged in campaigning for the rights of the disabled. Despite the protest being advertised on the UKUncut website, few of the younger generation that make up the anti-tax avoidance movement turned out.

Those who worked in the building, which also houses the Evening Standard and the Independent, seemed largely unconcerned with the protest – though some were heard making tasteless jokes about people with dyslexia.

The Daily Mail is an interesting target, selected primarily for its contribution to political discourse. The Mail may play a significant role in propagating myths and half-truths about those claiming benefits, but it is not directly contributing to their plight or making a significant impact on the nation’s finances via tax-avoidance. Accusations that the Mail’s owner avoids tax seemed to be tacked on to the protest, and were barely mentioned by those lining up outside its offices.

By choosing to target a paper, the protesters may have made a slight miss-step. UKUncut’s decision to highlight specific wrong-doing on the part of corporations has helped widen the pressure points for the anti-cuts movement beyond government. But going for an organisation that has a far more abstract role in the cuts could be a step-backward, especially given as the paper has been vocal in its criticism  of tax avoidance in the recent past. The Daily Mail may be no friend of the anti-cuts movement, but some of those who read it may well take issue with the excesses of large corporations.

Going for the Daily Mail may also strengthen impressions that these protests are a simple matter of the hard left pursuing an agenda that has been around for decades. This may even obscure very reasonable complaints about the government’s new rules on incapacity benefit that appear to be removing payments from those unable to work. Then again, given the Daily Mail’s coverage of ‘benefit cheats’ and the new testing regime administered by the controversial ATOS, it is unsurprising it has attracted so much anger from those who feel the disabled are under attack.

Posted by  |  April 14, 2011 | Categories: Cuts, Daily Mail, Disabled, Tax-avoidance | Leave A Comment »

A mini gallery of March 26 photos: Oxford Circus, Regents Street and outside Fortnum and Masons

Photos by Kris Sime

Posted by  |  March 27, 2011 | Categories: Cuts, Fees, Marches, Non-Violence, Protest, Riots, UKUncut, Unions | Leave A Comment »

Police and press are failing to discriminate between those up for violence and protesters who just wanted to do more than march.

 

Yesterday’s March for the Alternative, organised by the TUC, will inevitably be remembered for the pitched battles in  Trafalgar Square. Images of chaosand the resulting desolation around Nelson’s column meant the cameras were unlikely to focus on anything else. Much of the press will follow the police and government line that is always wheeled out when things turn nasty. A peaceful demonstration was spoiled by a small minority. There was a huge contrast between events on the march and rally which attracted up to 500,000 people and the flashpoints around central London: violence and sit-ins, occupations and criminal damage, but a simple dichotomy is misleading.

For once, when the press refer to the instigators of the trouble as anarchists, they are probably right. For perhaps the first time since the G20, escalation was initiated by a recognizable group of organised anarchists – known as the Black Bloc.  Around 300 people, dressed for the most part in the cameraman’s dream of black hoodies with covered faces, split off from the main march at around one PM. Once at Topshop, they began pelting the building, and press, security and police with rocks, paint grenades and smoke bombs. At the same time UKUNcut activists were staging coordinated sit-ins, but such peaceful direct action is unlikely to ever attract the same coverage as masked men throwing things. It was this Black Bloc, rather than UKUncut, who would form the core of the violence throughout the rest of the day.

Yet this group were only a few hundred strong at any one point. What mainstream coverage is failing to pick up on is the large contingent of peaceful protesters, mainly young, who decided not to merely follow the path to Hyde Park for an orderly rally.  Instead they decided to occupy Oxford Circus, stage strange artistic displays, support those occupying buildings such as Fortnum and Masons on Picadilly, and generally cause disruption without violence.

Sometime after seven PM, when Piccadilly had calmed down and Trafalgar Square had yet to blow up, the police began arresting the around 100 UKUncut protesters who had remained occupying Fortnum and Masons.  They are thought to have been arrested for aggravated trespass (fair enough) but also criminal damage. Reports from inside say one display was accidentally knocked over – and given UKUncut’s record of peaceful protest it seems unlikely any malicious damage was caused. Yet these arrests will likely end up being a significant proportion of the total punished for their role in yesterday’s chaos. This shows a failure to discriminate between those peacefully making a point, and those making a point of being violent.

There were people amongst the crowds yesterday that were up for a fight from the start, and who revelled in launching attacks on the police and causing often indiscriminate damage to property. Many of these people will never face arrest because they could so easily disappear into the crowd. In contrast, those who openly made their point by occupying a high-profile building, and waiting there until the police arrived, are currently sitting in cells across London (there were so many the police used a coach to transport them).

There were thousands yesterday who didn’t believe merely marching sufficient to oppose government policies they fear will wreak havoc on UK society. However a simple narrative will class all those who took action in central London as a violent minority spoiling it for the rest. In fact, many are using time-honoured peaceful methods of protest that are respectable, and many more simply felt that by marching where they weren’t meant to would show slightly more defiance. There were hundreds who gathered in Trafalgar Square in the evening for a party preliminary to a 24 hour sleep-in, with no intention of engaging in a riot.  These people shouldn’t be lumped into the same category as those who went hoping for violence, but it seems unlikely that the after image of riots in Trafalgar Square will allow such a careful analysis.

Posted by  |  March 27, 2011 | Categories: Cuts, Fees, Jobs, Marches, Non-Violence, Police, Protest, Riots, Tax-avoidance, UKUncut, Vandalism | Leave A Comment »

March 26th, the TUC and the threat of mass disturbance

Saturday the 26th is the date of the long awaited Trade Unions Council (TUC) “March for an Alternative”. Projected turn out is well over 100,000 and more optimistic union organisers have talked about more than 1m protesters taking to the streets. Given recent conflict between police and demonstrators at protests over the last few months, there is unsurprisingly much speculation over whether we will see similar scenes next Saturday. Yet the TUC’s preparation for the protest suggests greater concern for boosting its bargaining power than mounting a wide-ranging challenge to the government.

Despite the tough talk from many of the unions, the TUC has shown it wants to do its best to avoid any disorder.  The council has agreed not merely to cooperate with the police during the demonstration, but actively to assist them in controlling protesters. The police will have input into who will be considered eligible to steward the demo, and union stewards will share information – including opening their walkie-talkies up to the police monitors. If any stewards witness unauthorised protest, sit downs etc, they are to immediately inform the police who have promised a tough response.

Given these stunning concessions that the TUC has granted the police, it seems likely that the intention is not merely to facilitate an expression of public dissatisfaction with government policy. Rather, it is focused on increasing its bargaining power by proving mass support, without causing much upset. Spontaneous and unauthorised actions outside of the TUC’s control simply do not fit this plan.

The TUC’s motivation may be noble, and may view the approach as merely pragmatic strategy to limit the impact of unpopular government policy. But it is also an example of the organisation’s inclination to impose centralised control that drove so many activists to abandon trade unions, and the organised left, in favour of less hierarchical, if often chaotic, forms of protest. It is not likely to go down well with either the student protesters, or the members of UKUncut, who have so far put the unions to shame with their dedication to making their point on the streets.

 

Posted by  |  March 19, 2011 | Categories: Cuts, Jobs, Marches, Police, Protest, Riots, Unions | Leave A Comment »

What does the prospect of police marchers mean for anti-cuts protest?

The prospect of the police marching against cuts has provoked considerable excitement among the activist community. At least one commentator has suggested that the public surround the police and kettle them for a prolonged period. The Third Estate.net has advocated supporting the police protest despite the turbulent – to say the least – history of activist relations with the force. UKUncut have historically made a point of informing the officers attendant at their protests that should they chose to take action, the organisation will support them.

It would be a tactical error for them not to do so. Most of UKUncut’s rhetoric focuses upon the devastating impact of cuts to the full gamut of public services, it would be petty to only protest cuts to the services they get along with, though their website has yet to comment on the prospect of the police taking to the streets in protest. Given the inclusive nature of the group, they are likely to offer their support even if individual members have seen the sharp end of police action

The wider left activist movement remains divided. Many have argued that the police represent the physical force of the capitalist state and therefore place themselves outside of the bounds of solidarity offered to doctors, nurses, teachers etc. While understandable, this is short sighted and runs counter to the ethos of the movement. If the capitalist state and its functionaries is the focus of your objections then there are very good reasons to apply the same restrictions to doctors, nurses and teachers. Doctors and nurses both perform vital maintenance on the individual parts of the capitalist machine, keeping workers healthy enough to provide labour to exploit. Teachers surely must be the most nefarious of all groups – committed to indoctrinating workers from childhood into subservience

People are not making these arguments of course and for good reason. Firstly none of these groups has the capacity for the legal use of physical force; the police do and have frequently used it, provoking quite justified resentment among activists. Secondly, there is a division made between the role a given group is considered to play within a system – the medical or teaching profession for example – and the motivations and values of the individual professionals. Most people would be happy to accept that doctors and teachers chose their professions out of largely altruistic reasons and that that this renders such professions a degree of nobility whatever your feelings about the capitalist system that both groups support. The police tend to benefit from no such generosity.  The hard left consider them thugs hired by the ruling classes to protect their property; a physical and often brutal manifestation of the state’s power over its own citizens. They ignore the other side of police; to provide some measure of protection for often deprived communities  and vulnerable to crime and violence.

From a more pragmatic perspective, even if you see the police simply as a manifestation of state power, it would be very short-sighted to miss the subversive potential of this manifestation marching in protest against the government. At last year’s student protests the police represented the physical authority of government. They physically demarcated the limits of ‘legitimate’ protest. As soon as the students were perceived to have exceeded this, threatening to undermine the government’s authority, the police acted violently to force them back within those limits. The bleeding skulls and activists dragged from wheelchairs represented the physical imposition of state authority played out on the body of the protester.  Given this dynamic; imagine how it would upset this symbolic system when the arms of the state turn against it and march themselves. Even if the protests do not become violent the mere fact that police will have to be drafted in to police a group of protesting police officers raises profound questions about the operations of the state and the functioning of its agents. If nothing else we must ask who the state can turn to as its agency of last resort if even their physical arm is on the streets chanting “Fight, Fight, Fight back!”

Posted by  |  March 10, 2011 | Categories: Cuts, Jobs, Marches, Police, Protest, Riots, UKUncut, Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

6 Billion Ways: Protest, Art and Political Songs

6 Billion Ways is a progressive conference organised by, amongst others, Friends of the Earth, The World Development Movement and War on Want. It took place yesterday in various locations around Shoreditch though primarily in the RichMix arts centre on Bethnal Green Road. The program included discussions on the history of money, rethinking democracy and the roll of music in protest movements. It was, in essence a younger, hipper Marxism.

The discussion on ‘Rebel Rock’ in particular prompted me to think about the role of music – and art generally – in protest movements and whether their impact can be overstated.  Tom Lehrer was once asked whether he thought his satirical songs had affected the politics of his time. He replied that they’d had about the same impact as “those Berlin cabaret shows that did so much to stop the rise of Hitler in the 1930’s”. Debate about the role of political art often expresses this scepticism. Yet others maintain, and it seems instinctively true that art does affect people and so political art – be it ‘Guernica’ or ‘Killing in the Name’ must help somehow.  This particular session was chaired by Yasmin Khan from War on Want and featured journalist and music critic Robin Denslow, John Pandit (Pandit G) from Asian Dub Foundation and Faithless’ Dave Randall. All three panellists were clear that they felt that political music was important and that it should continue.  John Pandit talked in particular about the song ‘Free Satpal Ram’ and Robin Denslow discussed “Free Nelson Mandela”. Of course neither claimed that these songs were the agent of liberation of their respective subjects and few would have agreed had they said so.

So, in what sense did this music aid the cause?  No one who is passionately committed to nuclear expansion would join CND after listening to ‘We Will All Go Together When We Go’. However, Lehrer said that someone who is on the fence or moving towards a position may be encouraged to take the leap. The panellists were all more positive in their expression today but they expressed the same idea. ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ did not convince the Apartheid regime to do so but it did convince enough of those all important undecideds to reject the prevailing image Mandela as a terrorist.  In this way it strengthened support for the Anti-apartheid movement in the UK.

This seems to be the function that art performs. It contributes a discourse, often more convincing because it is at one remove from direct political rhetoric, to a wider paradigm. In doing so it helps assure those who believe in that paradigm that they are in the right and may help to nudge those not firmly committed to remaining outside it.  One could say the same about the 6 Billion Ways conference.  Aside from an opportunity to network with progressives from various organisations, it provides a chance to immerse oneself more fully within a paradigm that defines itself as at odds with much of mainstream society. Opposition can be draining so it is beneficial to spend a day surrounded by posters, leaflets, discussions, speeches and activists who – whatever their ideological particulars – affirm by their presence the validity of your position. Tim Montgomery will probably never attend 6 Billion Ways, and would walk out unconvinced if he did. It is unlikely that the solution to rampant capitalism or environmental degradation will spring fully formed from a conference like this, no one expects it to. But by attending they affirm their participation in a process they believe will find one.

Posted by  |  March 6, 2011 | Categories: Arts, Civil Liberties, Progressive, Protest | Leave A Comment »

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