| |
|
Mm, yesterday was, well, eenteresting. Potus, Stoatie and me meet at Holborn at 2.15. By 2.30, we have been cordoned by coppers outside Lockheed Martin (an arms company). It was the fastest Section 12 I've ever been caught in. This was done either because demonstrators tried to block the traffic and/or charged at police or 'just because', depending on whose version of events u wanna believe. I didn't see what (if anything) happened, all the violence i actually witnessed at this point was some guy nicked a cop's hat and two seconds later was out cold. Unfortunately he and pursuing coppers knocked into me so I couldn't track what actually happened cos i was too busy trying to stay on my feet, so i'll allow the police the benefit of the doubt... maybe he really did fall over, you never know.
We then were marched down to Traf Sq, they were absolutely not going to let us go and there was bog all chance of slipping through their lines. As we headed down Charing Cross road, this memorable exchange took place:
the crowd: Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets!
Stoatie: Arse treats?
A brilliant individual then appeared on the pavement and gave out face-masks "to protect us against SARS".  He was dragged into the cordon by police for doing that.
Then we are funneled into Traf Sq, Stoatie and myself pretty desperate for a pee by this time but they're still not letting anyone go. There was a fair bit of what one might call 'angry scuffles' but the crowd was on the whole fairly (surprisingly?) subdued. The way the police acted was pretty provoking, but there were few attempts to break out. (I think one cop got injured around this point, but we couldn't see what exactly happened.) There was a sound system, though, which helped enormously and kept the atmosphere fairly light. A carnival atmosphere, really, only spoiled by the fact that it was a carnival which we were being forcibly held in.
Then at last we find cops who let us out, and head to the pub, the Chandos, to be exact. We're drinking away, there are admittedly some 'faces' in the pub, but when we leave we find the place surrounded by SO3 (the cop camera crew) who video all of us. It was at this point that tempers got a bit frayed (hell, they've no legal right to do that IIRC). Anyway, we took retaliatory photos of them and Stoatie administered some fine verbal abuse.
We head back, watch a few more scuffles, Stoatie yells more colourful abuse. A gang of demonstrators runs like fuck along Pall Mall, up St James St and along Picadilly. I follow, as do cops. There's trouble when a line of riot cops blocks Picadilly from the other end, heading us all off. Again, it happened too fast for me to be able to tell who did what first (i do have some photos though) but it just kicked off big time. Anyway i felt i'd used enough luck up for one day so i went and met up with Stoatie, Potie and some IRL chums in the Chandos again and got pissed. |
|
|
