The right to protest is a precious and important one. It is fundamental to any democracy. Co-operation with the police has always been a sensitive area and indeed current legislation requires agreement with the police on march and demonstration routes. However, something very fundamental has changed this week.
The organisers of the Time to Act climate change march have been told that if they go ahead with their planned demonstration, they will have to pay the bill for temporary traffic reorganisation in the area. Continue reading
This morning 10 protesters have been found guilty of “aggravated trespass” at Fortnum & Masons. Laurie Penny commented “this is bloody ridiculous. I was there, it was a peaceful protest.” They were given a 6 month conditional discharge, with a£1000 cost order each, and one person got a £215 fine. This was for an action in which, as the police officer in the video below from the inside of Fortnum and Mason explains, the people there were “non-violent and sensible“. The footage filmed at the anti-cuts protest was shot by Green & Black Cross legal observers and handed to UK Uncut, which passed it on to the 
The OccupyLSX protest outside St Paul Cathedral seems to have boosted the rate of attrition among senior Anglican clergy to levels last seen in the mid-1550s.
I went to Occupy LSX outside St. Paul’s today after delivering a speech at a conference on how the banks had taken over and grossly abused in their own self-interest the control of the money supply. It is critical to our economy and the future of the British State, yet it has never been discussed in the media and it has never been debated in Parliament. In the tent village outside the cathedral however its iniquities and injustices are all too virally felt and expressed, even if the technicalities are not fully understood. But where else is this cry of pain being raised, and why is it not being listened to? 
Relations between the anti-cuts movement and the police are bad. That’s an understatement: they are atrocious.