Two minutes after two of the players donned white overalls, and just after the mock police had began batoning them, a real police car came out of nowhere, two cops jumped out, grabbed a woman in a white overall and proceeded to shove and pull her around.

They came up with several spurious reasons for attempting to detain us, including claiming we were causing an obstruction and suggesting that we might be intending to storm a nearby bank (which was closed).

The five of us ran down some side streets and, when we thought we’d lost the cops, return to Oxford St. We rounded a corner, to come face to face with 12 more cops and two paddy wagons so we legged it once more. One of the slower players was grabbed by a cop who then radioed in to find out if she’d actually done anything wrong!

When he found out she hadn’t she was let go and we re-grouped outside Niketown [where there was another story:
We started giving out copies of the Mayday Collective’s spoof paper, the Hate Mail, when Nike security started getting agitated and calling for backup. One of them came out with a camera and began photographing us. A random guy in a suit came out of the store and took a paper from us – and when he did Nike security grabbed him and bundled him over into a corner. Then they stuck a camera in his face and took a picture – at which point the guy went mad and took out his BBC press card! The journo called his Producer, the called the cops on the Niketown security, and they called the cops on us. Soon after the police arrived (again) we all decided to leave.]

For more information on the Womble 7 trial, check out