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Police attack Criminal Justice Bill rally

01 September 1994

About 80,000 people marched from the Embankment to Hyde Park in London in protest at the Criminal Justice Bill, on 9 October. The march, one of the largest seen in the capital in recent years, was notable for the many young people who took part. It was also, as many of those who took part observed, good-humoured, with a carnival-like atmosphere that included fire-eaters and unicyclists.

At the end of the march a rally took place in Hyde Park. Sound- systems that accompanied the march set up at the Marble Arch end of Park Lane. Throughout the afternoon riot police assembled in large numbers, using increasingly military tactics to enclose two thousand people drawn to the music. Several fierce charges by riot police, into the front of the crowd in the park, provoked sporadic - but minor - missile throwing by demonstrators in response.

In the early evening the sound-systems moved into nearby Cumberland Gate. The celebratory mood of the crowd changed as mounted riot police charged into the rear of the demonstrators. Simultaneously, police attempted to gain access to the park as a police helicopter warned that force would be used if people did not disperse.

A number of skirmishes took place between police and demonstrators in the park. The clashes continued in Oxford Street as riot police charged and running battles broke out. Police are believed to have made about 40 arrests and another thirty demonstrators were treated in hospital. Among those injured was a journalist who was truncheoned by three police officers. The Labour MP, Jeremy Corbyn, who chaired the rally in Hyde Park, condemned the unprovoked police attack and called for the officer in charge - Chief Superintendent Richard Cullen - to be disciplined.

The Criminal Justice Bill will criminalise many young people, and is due to come into law at the end of October. Among its measures are: * abolition of the right to silence; * powers of arrest against squatters and new-age travellers; * police powers to take body samples; * new powers of stop and search; * new 'trespass' laws against those attending raves; * longer custodial sentences.<