The complete ignoring of the majority of people in this country to not attack in the first place, to the refusal to allow protesters to the Fairford protest a week ago, to the increasingly oppressive methods being meted out by the police in Oxford Street yesterday.

A protest organised by the Stop the War coalition to march towards the US embassy in Grovesnor Square, London, continued after protesters moved away to continue their discontent at Parliament Square. Whilst on route, an impromptu sit-down took place in Oxford Street where shoppers were until that point indulging themselves in the pointless leisure of latest fashions and accessories. Traffic came to a standstill and consumers pressed pause on their credit cards and observed the small but effective direct action.

Having prevented the traffic, police blocked everything else by forming a circle around the protest of one hundred with a vastly oversized police presence. Protesters who were separated from the sit-down saw the aggressiveness of the police as they cleared the road pushing and shoving the people. We were then forced away from the road and pavement into Duke Street, away from the support of the other excluded protesters. There the police increased their aggression.

Police assaulted indiscriminately by hard shoving at maximum arm length, catching one woman flat in the face. At this point I called one police orifice a “thug”, appropriate I thought. We continued being harassed down the road at which point another woman was being dragged out for arrest, as we were tripping over the fallen, I tried to pull back the woman. Here I was dragged out and thrown to the ground.

With my face in the tarmac, I heard a policeman’s voice, whose knee was in my back say “What shall we do him for?” Another voice said, “Affray”. “Yeah” came the reply and “obstruction”. Insult was added to injury when another police officer number 4211 expressed, “I’m sick of you lot, you’ve been doing this for two and a half weeks, you think you can go where you like”. Of course!

Handcuffed in restraints, which contain a solid plastic body, in the middle preventing any wrist movement, I was taken to a wall and searched. Nothing found I was eventually taken to a van after a twenty-minute wait. The officer said as I walked into the van handcuffed behind my back. “Don’t touch anything”, quite how I would do that with the cuffs on behind my back bemused me, so I said “What with my teeth?”

I then waited with two others until another van arrived taking me and one other to the Charing Cross Police station, where all arrested were taken. Outside I was asked my age, to which I replied “32”. The reply, ”You should know better” he said. Quite what I should know better I’m not sure. Maybe I do know better and that was why I was there protesting.

Once inside, a receptionist told me my lawyer was on the way, which was comforting. Despite me telling this to the custody sergeant, he twice asked me if I wanted an in house solicitor, as I would have to wait a long time. I chose to wait.

The rest of the process was tedium until I was told I would be charged under section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. I looked at the form and found that the Affray charge was dropped. So Fingerprints, DNA and photo was taken by an officer who asked who organised the protest. I asked him if he wanted names and addresses. “No, they don’t let me out much he said.”

I was scraped on the neck Bruised on the eye and forehead, shoulder was wrenched and all in all the police behaved with what I consider to be the norm these days. Thanks to the legal observer for the lawyer and for the posse waiting for me after.