Targeting demonstrations
01 January 1991
Targeting demonstrations
artdoc August=1992
CARF no 8, May/June 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]
Ten years ago, the SPG was disbanded.
Now the use of its successor, the
paramilitary Territorial Support Group,
for the policing of demonstrations is
coming under scrutiny.
CARF has asked Mildred Gordon, MP for Bow and Poplar, to table
a parliamentary question over the policing of an anti-fascist
demonstration, organised by the Stop Tyndall Committee, the Tower
Hamlets Ad Hoc Committee and Anti-Racist Alliance, which
culminated in a picket of York Hall in east London, where the BNP
was due to hold an election meeting on 6 April 1992.
Following an anti-racist march in Bermondsey last August, when
the BNP ran amok in Southwark Park, the Metropolitan police
undertook an internal review of the policing of anti-fascist
demonstrations in the capital.
The large-scale police operation on 6 April, including the use
of specialist squads and snatch squads, reveals that it is, as
ever, the antifascists who will feel the full force of any review
in police organisation. No BNP members were arrested, but at
least six anti-fascists were charged, some with offences of
disorderly conduct and affray. As Ranjit Lohia of CAPA Legal
Advice, which is coordinating the defence of those arrested, told
CARF: `The police operation was totally geared towards protecting
the fascists. When the BNP held an impromptu march down the Roman
Road on 9 April, election day, waving union jacks and
intimidating shoppers, the police were nowhere to be seen.'
Anti-fascists outside York Hall on the evening of 6 April
initially took plainclothes police on its flat roof for nazis out
to rile the crowd. But, later, as police snatch squads made
sporadic forays into the crowd, it was clear that they were
radioing to coppers on the ground information on who to single
out for arrest. After less than 100 BNP supporters went into York
Hall, the anti-fascist mobilisation began to dwindle.
The protest was finally wound down and as the last few protesters
made their way home, a CARF reporter witnessed the most dis-
turbing incident of the evening. At least five policemen jumped
on a young man, who was walking away from them, and beat him
senseless. The officers then attempted to revive him by smacking
him around the face. When the police were asked why the young man
was being arrested, they replied that at 7.05pm he had kicked a
police barrier.
Police attack on Kurds
On 24 March, Kurdish demonstrators outside the Turkish embassy
in Belgrave Square were subjected to an unrestrained and
ferocious assault by the police. The protest was against the
recent wave of repression by the Turkish military. (Reports
detail many hundreds of casualties, including over 50 dead, as
well as widespread arrests and detentions in Kurdish areas.)
Independent eye-witness accounts of police actions talked of a
`totally unprovoked' attack. Beginning within minutes of the
demonstrators assembling, it was instigated by the arrival of a
special Territorial Support Unit and involved up to 100 police
officers with dogs, who charged the crowd with batons. Accounts
of the incident indicate an organised, preplanned strategy by the
police, belying their claim to have been taken unprepared and by
surprise. At least 30 people were injured, including women and
young children, and nine were hospitalised. One man suffered a
fractured skull and was in intensive care for three days, and a
number of others had nasty cuts and abrasions to the head, as
well as severe truncheon beatings to the shoulders, arms and
legs.
Of the 20 demonstrators arrested, nine were kept overnight in
police cells - four had to wait eight hours for the medical
treatment that they needed. Eleven people were eventually
charged, with serious public order offences and assault of
police