On Friday !st Febuary our local peace group, Wrekin Stop War, were protesting at the Holiday Inn when Gordon Brown visited. We were pleased to meet a group protesting against school closures when we arrived and as our banner ‘Capitalism is Killing our Communities’, mentioned the closure of schools (amongst other things) the two groups had plenty of common ground. The sun was shining, spirits were high and the children were chanting slogans, what could possibly go wrong?

After Gordon Brown’s car had sped past the chanting children when he arrived, we were told that he would be leaving at around 2pm. However, just after 2, the security staff at the Holiday Inn told us that the PM had gone, presumably to avoid him having to face those terrifying small people when he left.

Then we received a tip off from a member of the press that Brown had moved to the International Centre for a private meeting and we went round the back and adopted a safe position on a small area of pavement near the entrance.

At first, a senior local police officer came down and told us that we were free to protest but that we must stay out of the road. Then the centre’s security guards decided to get all heavy and told us to move because we were on private property. After some discussion, the people with the children were moved down the road onto a horrible little mini island on the junction. Despite assurances that they had been moved for their safety, was a far worse spot that we were in, with traffic on all sides.

For our part, some of us had intended to try and approach Brown’s car with our banners but after a brief discussion, decided that we were not going to do this because of the children. However, the demands that we move were so unreasonable that we decided to stand our ground and refused. We tried to reason with the security staff but they called in the police.

When the police tried to remove one of group physically, we sat down and were dragged down to the bottom of the road by the police, despite passive resistance. One of our group was then assaulted and the police chose to single out the two older members of our group, one in his late 70s, for arrest.

The rest of us were told to stay on the pavement just over the road from the schools protestors and were refused any details of the others, now being held in a police van. One of our group was then issued with a Section 5A warning under the Public Order Act for saying ‘shit’ (allegedly because there were children present), and I received one for stepping into the road to see if I could see where they were holding my friends. This was no longer relevant to what we were doing as Section 5A covers trespass on public property.

We were assured that we would be allowed to make our protest as Brown passed by but as soon as his car approached, we were surrounded by the police and security guards who prevented us from even raising our banners (this can be seen happening in the footage from last nights Midlands Today). When we tried to break through, another protestor and I were barged into the hedge and another was completely floored. As we had been moved to this area specifically because it was not private property, we asked the police to stop the security guards, who were obviously enjoying themselves immensely, attacking our group. They failed to do so and one of the officers who had pushed me into the hedge claimed I had hit him with my banner and started talking about arrests for assaulting a police officer. I have to say that I don’t honestly know whether my banner hit him or not but it’s hard to control what you’re doing when you’re being bundled into a thorny hedge! Suffice to say such a grim view wasn’t taken of the officer who threw our banners at us after we had been dragged down the road.

Once Brown’s car had gone, we were allowed back up to see our friends who had, rather bizarrely, now been ‘de-arrested’.

I’m not writing this to make claims of horrendous police brutality, after all were not in Stalin’s Russia or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, and I know that not everyone on the forum shares my political outlook nor would they have supported the group’s protest. However, the suppression of the right to peaceful protest is an issue that affects us all. The young female reporter from the Sloppy Star seemed completely shocked by what she had seen but it’s happening every day.

Apart from my obvious frustration at being prevented from protesting, the thing that really struck me was the stupidity of Gordon Brown’s PR team. Surely Gordon talking to the children would have been a better image to be seen in the media than the PM’s car speeding past them whilst other protestors were dragged away and pensioners arrested.

In theory, the power Brown has at his disposal should mean that a few protestors pose no threat whatsoever but, as with Blair, the fact that he only speaks to handpicked audiences and avoids voices of protest at all costs, suggests differently. In some ways, he does have more cause for concern than Blair, after all, no-one in this ‘great democracy’ elected him as their leader. What right does he have to command the tools of state?

Although I acknowledge that we have more freedom than many peoples of the world, the police’s response that they are ‘just doing their job’ doesn’t really hold any water. I’m sure there are some Nazis that used that excuse!

What’s more, they are being ripped off by the Government too and thousands of them made their own protest in London last week. Why should they feel any great loyalty to Brown’s regime