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Police Mayday tactics - BBC 'Talking Point'

Matthew Kalman | 02.05.2001 13:38

'I dissent!' (e-mail just sent to BBC Talking Point online about police tactics on Mayday. All comments pro-police so far - will this one appear?)

I dissent!

So now the Met claim to have prevented the huge riot that - in truth - only they were promising us in the first place (their hysteria causing £20 m of damage before a single window was broken, apparently). Most protesters were just keen to party and protest freely - and may well have done that, if not intimidated and treated like animals.
I guess the Met also saw off the droves of machete and samurai sword-wielding foreign anarchists that they also promised. Well done!
They boast of avoiding the mass rioting of last year. I was there - what mass rioting? 'Guerilla Gardening' was wholly peaceful for the whole day - Maypole dancing, planting hemp and carrots etc.
Trouble started when bored people were corralled up from the deliberately flooded Parliament Square (where they would have stayed peacefully if police had left it dry) past a McDonalds which had had its police protection mysteriously withdrawn quite some time BEFORE any real violence had taken place (as only The Guardian bothered to report).
The police clearly knew what to expect: they had numerous fixed and mobile cameras outside McDonalds. Three-hundred people walked straight past and ignored this entrapment at first, but in the end the predictable happened...
Questions from an MEP, from the Metropolitan Police Authority and others have yet to obtain an answer as to why the Met chose to invite the pivotal McDonalds attack like this.
It hardly does mainstream British journalism proud that no-one has cared to, or dared to, pursue this.
I’m interested to hear any evidence for or against the entrapment hypothesis ( matthewkalman@yahoo.com). [** Please leave this my e-mail in**]

Matthew Kalman
- e-mail: matthewkalman

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  2. Samurei Swords. — Mr S