7000 demonstrate for the right to work as police impose strict conditions on protest.
Police behind the cordons protecting the Conservative Party conference from right to work protesters
This was, according to the police, an entirely peaceful march, with no criminal offences taking place. It was predominantly a trade union march, upbeat and with plenty of colourful banners. Yet the police still insisted on imposing strict conditions on the route, refusing to allow the march anywhere near the Conservative Party conference which was the focus of the protests. These conditions were ‘robustly’ enforced with ten foot metal cordons, dogs and huge numbers of police officers.
When, towards the end of the march, some from the anarchist block decided to force the point and leave the authorised route, they were immediately ‘kettled’ - surrounded and held by police and dog units. The fifty or so in the kettle were pushed and shoved towards the car park where coaches were waiting, and were told they would be searched and released. Police cameramen carefully filmed each person as they were searched, getting close up shots of head and shoulders, clothing, shoes and ‘identifying features’. Police also demanded they give their name and address on film. The legality of all this is dubious - the Public Order Act (section 60) gives the police powers to search people for weapons but not, as they did here, to gather intelligence for their database while they are doing it.
When about half of the group objected to being filmed in this way, and refused to co-operate with the search while police cameras were present, the police response was to search them by force. At least one protester was left with severe bruising, another missing clumps of hair. None of the searches resulted in anything ‘untoward’ being found, there were no items seized and no arrests.
West Midlands intelligence gatherer 475
Generally the surveillance, while often discrete, was ever present. A large police mobile CCTV van (bearing the words Football Operations) was parked at the march start point. The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), the unit that exists to keep tabs on ‘domestic extremists’ were there too, gathering their own ‘intel’. A very expensive police helicopter hovered above. And police cameramen took photographs from windows of a number of buildings lining the route (out of reach of Fitwatchers!).
Given the extent of surveillance of their members on this march, it is remarkable (though perhaps not surprising) that the unions don’t do more to question where the line is between ‘facilitating’ protest, and controlling political expression.
Police surround protester about to be forcibly searched
EDL trash houses and Asian businesses as they go on the rampage in Dudley
Taxi smashed by EDL
At least a couple of dozen houses, cars and local small businesses in Dudley town centre were yesterday attacked by demonstrators from the anti-Islamic English Defence League (EDL). Around two hundred EDL broke their way out of police cordons to carry out a frenzied attack on whatever was at hand. Asian businesses were no doubt a focus - a Balti restaurant was clearly singled out, as was a taxi. But the white working class population of Dudley also came under attack, including a white woman with a baby, who narrowly missed a brick that had smashed through her window.
Asian business has windows smashed
Residents called urgently for police assistance and help in protecting their homes from further attack, but none came. Police just a few streets away, sauntering back from some sort of confrontation with the EDL, showed no interest in helping frightened residents. NPOIU cop Paul Mather, who was with them, was more concerned with crowing that Fitwatch had ‘missed the action’.
Injured EDL receiving treatment
More 'action' was to come. Six EDL were knocked down by a car, sustaining leg and head injuries. The driver had not stopped (he was probably terrified) and rumours abounded that it had been a deliberate attack by Muslims and that one of the EDL had died. As the six lay on the road being treated by paramedics other EDL pulled metal poles from a passing truck and vowed to ‘go get the Muslims’. They then fought running battles with police in an attempt to get there.
EDL confront police in Stafford Street car park
Clearly the police had not expected the EDL to be able to break out of the system of containment they had devised for them at Stafford Street car park. There was a mixture of six foot fencing, rows of riot police and dogs, and finally solid metal cordons that barred every exit road. But the crowd, which totalled around a thousand, tore down fencing and threw a hail of missiles at the riot police. The metal cordons defeated the EDL for a while though, until they found an unguarded way out through a block of flats, and a few hundred got clear to begin the rampage.
Meanwhile Muslim areas were in a form of lockdown. Riot police were tasked with keeping Muslim youth in Muslim areas and came down heavily on groups that ventured out. One lot of Asian youths were chased by riot police and hit with batons almost as soon as they set foot in town. Back in their own estates around a dozen of them were chased through the streets by no less than three van loads of Met police in riot gear.
A day later, tension is reported to still be high in Kates Hill, Dudley, with heavy policing and continuing rumours of EDL presence. The real danger is that, unless more non-Muslims get out to seriously oppose the EDL, this could develop into a real race conflict.
>Mass arrests, cages and deportations – Copenhagen COP15
>
The arrest of such large numbers of people signalled a clear strategy of clamping down on potentially disorderly protest, a policy of prevention being better than cure. But while many UK protesters are shocked by the treatment, it is an approach to policing they should be used to. The Danish police have clearly learned a lot from the Met.
The Politi have simply put their own slant on the British tactics of kettling. On Saturday thousands amassed for a mass march to the COP15 centre, but the police had already decided that sections of the march would never reach their destination. Police vehicles hurtled though the crowd, supported by riot police to break up the demonstration into smaller, more controllable sections. Initially they detained everyone who would sit still on the streets for several hours. They then transferred people to specially set up cages, where people were held for up to 12 hours.
The arrest of such large numbers clearly had a marked effect on the demonstration. Set up to target the ‘black blocks’ the arrests encompassed a wide range of people, including journalists, frightened teenagers and, bizarrely, a group of Hare Krishna. The more clued up black blocks, meanwhile, evaded the arrests and set about sporadic rioting in another area of the city.
The real danger of police tactics like these, is that they have the potential to deter people from taking part in large scale protests at European summits – whether that be protests against climate change, or against the domination of the G8 or WTO. In the UK, the numbers involved in political protest dropped markedly as kettling became more commonplace - as people were simply worn down by constantly having to face hours in police cordons every time they took to the streets.
It is yet to be seen whether the kettling tactics employed at COP15 by the Danish police are used more extensively from now on. Mass preventative arrests are a significant move away from the crowd dispersal techniques – tear gas, baton strikes etc - more normally seen in Europe, (although such dispersal methods were also used in Copenhagen, particularly when disorder was sporadic or unexpected and the police were unable to prepare).
There will undoubtedly be legal challenge to the Danish policing, as the arrests were arbitrary and the detention disproportionate. But political activists also need to resist this particular form of police bullying from the ground up. Anyone heading for the next summit may want to bear in mind that mass containment is easy for the police to pull off when people are passively prepared to be contained. Attempting to contain a resistant crowd is whole different ball game.
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