Saturday, November 12, 2011

An odd day out

Yesterday, I and others were in London to pay our respects to those who died in service of their country, there was no intent on our part to cause any trouble, indeed the police and the home secretary appeared to have removed any threat to the ceremony with the banning of Muslims Against Crusades along with a raid against its leader the previous night.
Nonetheless, it was decided a day off and a ticket already bought should not go to waste so I and several hundred others from the EDL and other patriotic groups converged on London to pay our respects, wearing our poppies with pride and sadness as we we stood silently at 11 minutes past 11 no disruption, no chanting, just an eerie silence with occasional traffic noise in the far background, this had been preceded by a spontaneous round of applause to the veterans standing in Whitehall.
Afterwards I and a few others then went to look in the grounds of Westminster Abbey at the row upon row of poppies laid out by the various forces to remember their dead a truly emotional moment.
It was then that things got weird. We heard a lot of sirens going on and reports started to come through that the bulk of the EDL who were well dressed, no colours, no flags, no chanting had been surrounded by the police where they were standing and forced back into the Red Lion pub.
The picture really doesn't do it justice, but the police presence was very large and very aggressive.
Any attempt to approach the area and you were warned off, no-one was getting in or getting out, though apparently a few did manage to slip away before the "kettling" became 6 deep in places. Apparently the Dept of pre-crime The Met Police had decided to act upon a facebook rumour that the EDL were going to march and attack the Occupy London camp at St Paul's. If the EDL were, then it was news to the EDL and the various groups of other EDL members who were wandering around knew nothing of it, there were certainly enough of us to go to St Paul's if we wanted, though none of us really give a damn about them.
2 hours after the initial "kettling the police began dragging individual EDL members out and arresting them to "prevent a breach of the peace" not for actually doing anything, simply because of suspicion, a suspicion I know not to be true as the amount of texts flying about from EDL members showed their utter confusion as to what was going on. One of the guys dragged out from the pub also had a heart condition and his treatment triggered an attack, the video here shows it at about 1 minute in...
You'll note that he was dragged past 2 police first aiders who ignored him and when they realised he was not too well, they simply de-arrested him and told him to get lost, no ambulance called etc. He ended up in hospital seriously ill as a few other EDL watching did call an ambulance.
By that time though I and the others I was with had dispersed back to our homes wondering just what has happened to our society, when people peacefully respecting the fallen can be caged, arrested and then released with no charges 7 hours later when there had been no intention other than to show respect.

3 annotations:

Maverick said...

Sue them .. wrongful arrest and no grounds

andy said...

The Met,our very own homegrown Stasi.

Woman on a Raft said...

Thanks for the eye witness account.