London police attack peaceful lockdown protest

Coronavirus: police break up anti-lockdown protest in London | The Guardian - Damien Gayle, Mattha Busby & Ben Quinn:

September 26, 2020 - "Police have broken up a protest in central London after thousands of people defied their advice and demonstrated against lockdowns... and other coronavirus restrictions. The protest, organised by campaign groups including Save Our Rights UK, was called to mark six months since the passage of the Coronavirus Act.... Protesters began gathering from about midday, with the first speaker saying the demonstration was meant to be peaceful, and that it had been negotiated beforehand with the Metropolitan police, with a full health and safety impact assessment filed in advance. However, at about 3pm, the Met said the crowds had not 'complied with the conditions of their risk assessment and are putting people in danger of transmitting the virus'.... Officers waded in to break up part of the crowd and seize the sound system just before 3pm and used batons against protesters, leaving some bleeding with visible head injuries."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/26/london-lockdown-protesters-urged-to-follow-covid-rules


The police state I never imagined I would see in this country | Conservative Women - Kathy Gyngell:

September 27, 2020 - I am not a natural protester or activist.... Like most people of my generation, I have always thought I was lucky to be born in a free country ... and that we did not have that much to protest about. No longer. Last week when the man we call Prime Minister, far from rowing back on his disastrous Covid policy, threatened further and indefinite constraints on our cherished freedoms, I decided I must be at yesterday’s anti-lockdown protest and rally in London; that the situation is too grave to ignore, too grave to stay silent.

"As I approached Trafalgar Square from Whitehall, it seemed almost too quiet. I even wondered for a moment if the rally was happening. Then I knew it still was. For, arriving within the Square, I found thousands of people quietly and respectfully listening to a speech....All ages were there, all races, classes, colours and creeds – and many, many young people.... I did notice and wonder about the armed police poised menacingly between the columns of the neo-classical National Gallery frontage looking down on the crowd. Nor were they there, it later became obvious, to protect the speakers or the organisers. 

"I moved through the crowd chatting to different friendly people – who was speaking, who was next on? Everyone was straining to see and hear. But no one could have missed the event’s organisers’ repeated stress on the importance of the rally’s peaceful credentials. Though they really didn’t need to. The atmosphere was warm, wonderful and good-humoured.... I felt proud to be British again. It felt the best of how British people are; in a great tradition of British questioning of authority.... Then it got serious again with a rather long and worthy speech about the need for world or free trade (I couldn’t make it out) which decided me to do a final survey of the crowd before setting off home. More young people. All races. All good-humoured.

"As I reached the south-west corner of the Square I saw police by their motorbikes were donning helmets. Heading on towards Pall Mall, I saw that grim faced masked police in vans were beginning to pull out from a side street parking. In my innocence I thought this over-manned convoy was off back to base because with no trouble and relatively few people they were just not needed. 

"How mistaken I turned out to be. It was not till I got home that I found to my horror from the news that far from going back to base this must have been the start of their mobilising against the crowd. Which indeed they did. Officers determined to disperse the crowd, penned it in. Protesters and police were hurt.... As Suzanne Evans asked: 'Who authorised them to pen the crowd in? There was no need – there was no overspill into surrounding streets'.... It has shocked me to the core. And now I see that Sky News instead of focusing on unjustifiable and provocative police action has chosen to relay selective vox pops of ‘conspiracy theorists’.... I could have told Sky News that you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to question the legitimacy or the rationality of the current Emergency powers – or to want to publicly protest against them.

"Depressingly nearly all the papers today reporting the ‘clashes’ and the violence that occurred seem to have taken the pro-government line that the police enforcement of the government’s covid rules was justified, that they had a right to silence public dissent against them. They did not report that the police storming of the crowd after two and half hours of standing by was unprovoked or that there was every indication that their action was premeditated and planned. What I had witnessed was them moving into action when the rally was entirely peaceful and causing no disruption." 

Read more: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-police-state-i-never-imagined-i-would-see-in-this-country/