PEACE IS A DIRTY WORD
by josefeen foxter

On Tuesday 18 March, as MPs were discussing and voting on the war against Iraq, about 500 anti war protesters gathered outside Parliament. We were peacefully expressing our opposition to this illegal war, but ended up having to defend ourselves from unprovoked police violence. A police presence is never a surprise at events like this, but last night was noticeably different to other demos.

Protesters initially gathered in three different places: on Parliament Square, queuing up in front of St Stephen's entrance, and across the road from it. Those across the road, were mainly women from the Global Women's Strike with their banner: "Women say No war -- Invest in Caring, Not Killing". They set up an open mic for anyone to express their views against the war, and started speaking and chanting.

Soon after they arrived at 5.30 a couple of police came over to them saying they had to move because there were not enough police to cover both sides of the road. The women used the mic to ask everyone there whether they wanted to move, pointing out that there were not preventing people from passing. Everyone said they wanted to stay and much of the crowd in front of Parliament came over to their side of the road to tell the police that the women should stay. The police left and the now larger picket carried on peacefully, punctuated by powerful chants and speeches.

Some time later several police vans turned up and put barricades dividing one side of the road from the other. A large number of officers marched to the women's picket and ordered them to move or turn down their sound system. As the women argued about the need for a presence in front of Parliament, one officer switched off their mic. Concerned, more people from across the road joined the women and in the process many sat down in the road which was now blocked by several police vans on both sides of St Stephen's entrance. The crowd stopped the police for a while and people continued to chant, some thanking the cops for stopping the traffic for us!

But the police became more and more menacing as the evening went on. At 8 pm, they indulged in low grade intimidation techniques, using their road blockade as an opportunity to belittle people arriving by brusquely refusing entry there and making them walk 20m to the other lane. As the night went on, they simply barricaded each end of the demo; thus the protesters were contained between about 8 police vans, and people arriving were kept out by fences and a wall of police officers. Even those inside were forbidden from re-entering if they left so there was quite a crowd gathered trying to come in and exercise their right to protest.

Representatives from the Global Women's Strike had been at the rally for several hours and many different people had used their open mic, including Benjamin Zephaniah who recited a poem attracting a huge crowd, a man from the Congo who spoke about Clare Short's involvement in the war there which has kiled two million people so far, a man from Iraq and a veteran from the Falklands' war who moved everyone to tears.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, a group of about 10 police descended on the group and seized from our midst the young man on the mic at the time and, even more unbelievably, they surrounded and dragged away 72-year-old Selma James.

Selma had simply been holding the mic, speaking and inviting others to speak. She had done absolutely nothing at all to provoke being aggressively, physically apprehended. As others rallied around to ensure her safety, trying to reason with the police, urgently querying the need to arrest a 5ft tall, 72-yr-old peaceful pensioner, we were threatened with arrest. One of the 6 ft officers lost his temper, turned on one of the women, pushed her, forcibly grabbed the banner from her hand, smashed the pole over his leg and threw the remains at her.

The man who'd been leading the crowd in a rousing chorus of "The police are taking the PEACE" was separated from the group, interrogated and searched. We were told that the speaker had been using "vulgar language" ... it seems "peace" really is a dirty word! As people continued to chant "Release the brother", he was eventually let go. The police told us that they had taken offence because they thought the man was saying "The police are taking the PISS." What an excuse to justify bullying! As someone replied: "You have not thought of this yourselves, someone from inside Parliament told you to silence us." Before long, on the other side of the road, another individual who had by eyewitness accounts been doing absolutely nothing wrong -- he wasn't even chantng! -- but who, significantly was called Abdullah, was grabbed by 4 police, restrained and dragged to a van before being driven off.

Once again democracy is supposed to mean little more than voting every 5 years while keeping quiet the rest of the time so that politicians can get on with what none of us agrees with. But as millions of protesters have shown, that time is over. We will not allow war to be made in our name, we will not keep quiet about our money being used to kill other people.

The open mic on Tuesday night was crucial. It allowed everyone who wanted to make their voice heard against the war, it brought protesters together and allowed us to defend ourselves more successfully from police bullying. Most usefully, MPs John McDonell and Jeremy Corbyn were able to report to everyone outside on the debate and vote inside.

We all know that the police will be at all our demos and gatherings, we also know that many are against this war, and that most of their mothers and partners must be against it too. As one woman told the officers: "Your mother would not be proud of how you treated women today." She may have been protesting herself.