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UK: Police blamed for clashes on march

01 March 1997

In April nearly 20,000 people joined a march for social justice in support of Liverpool dockers, who were sacked 18 months ago after they refused to cross picket lines. The march, led by the Liverpool Dockers' Support Group and supported by the environmental group Reclaim the Streets, started in carnival fashion when it left south London, on route to the city. In Whitehall the march paused to jeer outside the Prime Minister's residence in Downing Street and a smoke-bomb was thrown, enveloping the area in orange smoke. Two protesters scaled a wall to climb into a Foreign Office building and threw papers to the crowd. This coincided with the intervention of several hundred riot police. The riot officers, some mounted, made repeated forays into the march, dividing it and provoking sporadic clashes before it was corralled into Trafalgar Square. Here, as a sound-system played in the middle of the Square, up to a thousand riot police led baton charges on those on the edges leading to increasingly violent clashes. Around 8pm police sealed off roads into Trafalgar Square and violently herded demonstrators towards Embankment underground station where further skirmishes took place on Waterloo Bridge. After the march Kevin Hargreaves, of the Dockers Support Group, claimed the violence was provoked by the police. He said: "We had an agreement there would be low policing. But on the day I was told that there would be a very, very heavy police presence. It was very, very provocative".