Trafalgar Square, 20 to 1

The Met obviously thought that the second ‘Freedom to Protest‘ event scheduled for Saturday afternoon posed a great threat to their credibility, although surely even they can’t have felt it was any kind of real threat to public order. But in January they had been caught a little with their pants down – and it wasn’t going to happen again. Police outnumbered the small group of demonstrators who gathered in Trafalgar Square by at least 20 to 1, and there were many more extra on duty in Parliament Square and elsewhere across Westminster.

So we had hundreds if not thousands of extra police on duty around Westminster, costing us many thousands of pounds to save a little face for the police. And in the event, a demonstration that was just a little street theatre and would have best been completely ignored by the farces of law and order – a typo on my part that actually became reality when the FIT phtoographer ran scared, chased by a protester with a shopping trolley offering free cakes, taking refuge by running up the stairs of the National Gallery.

The only other real action by police I’m aware of was to stop and search a young protester walking down Whitehall, making him remove his balaclava. They appear to be using law against terrorism to impose their fashion sense.

He was on his way to join the continuing anti-war protest in Parliament Square, where Brian Haw will have been for 2500 days early next month. Eventually a small group of the protesters did walk there without apparently being noticed, although the police did trail them as they walked out of the square all the way to a pub on the Horseferry Road.

More pictures from the day on My London Dairy.

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