Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Personal account of riot police charges in Hyde Park underpass

Written by Marie Ainsley from stopwar site published on the IMC ABB | 06.01.2009 14:46 | Palestine

This is an account of someones experience of police thuggery on saturdays demo for Gaza.

Written by Claire Ainsley
Monday, 05 January 2009
March against the Gaza massacre London 3 January 2009
Personal account of riot police charges in Hyde Park underpass

After a week of brutal and disproportionate violence by the Israeli government against the Palestinians, we joined thousands of others gathered at London’s Embankment to march for peace and justice.

It was a brilliant display of solidarity with the Palestinians, but the provocative behaviour of riot police in panic mode escalated an otherwise peaceful demonstration. We are ordinary citizens, who were marching for peace, but who were terrified by series of batoned charges in the Hyde Park Underpass. Conveniently, it meant the police violence went unseen and unrecorded by the TV camera crews, so this is our account for those who weren’t there.

The march was lively and good natured, a diverse mix of Muslims, Jews, young, old, women, men, children and families. We honoured the George Bush shoethrower by chucking some old shoes outside Downing Street as part of the organised photocall, and struggled to fit into Trafalgar Square which was filled with protesters listening to the speakers.

We cheered when we were told it was the biggest turnout of Palestinian solidarity, and booed our own leaders for lacking the political will to resolve this destructive conflict which has blighted the lives of so many innocents, Arab and Jew alike.

The organisers announced they would be marching to the Israeli Embassy at the end of the rally, so as it was finishing up my husband and I made our way to the west side of the square so we could join them. We all waited until well after the rally, but the people in front were getting inpatient and jostling so the police let them set off. We followed close behind, everyone buoyed up by the big turnout and chanting ‘free, free Palestine’ with more vigour than before.

As we approached the end of Piccadilly, with thousands of marchers streamed behind us, the familiar uniforms of the Met Police had changed to the blue helmets and thick plastic shields of riot police.

We were held at the top of the underpass for several minutes and the crowd was growing restless as it was getting darker. We saw a photographer or protester being pushed from the railing to the ground by one of the riot police, an ill tempered exchange followed and some pushing and shoving, and an experienced marcher tried to calm the situation down, which succeeded. We noticed the MP George Galloway had found his way to the front.

The atmosphere was still lively, friendly and peaceful despite the minor incident and the amassing of more riot police. We didn’t think much of it at the time – we had been on plenty of Stop the War demos which had all passed off peacefully.

Eventually we were allowed to continue, down the slope to the underpass. We were held back a couple of times but this was normal to let marchers catch up. The atmosphere was great. We moved nearer to the front, perhaps ten back, amongst us were children and women and older people, predominantly Muslim. We didn’t see any missiles or aggression from the protesters.

The next thing we knew was that a hail of batons came over the top and our bodies were being pushed backwards and people were screaming – the police were charging us. We threw ourselves to the sides and put our hands over our heads. The charge had stopped, and we checked around us to see whether people were ok. Some young Muslim women next to us were crying and clearly petrified.

And then it came again, charging towards us, then stopped. My heart was thumping, I thought there was no way we could go forward or back, I was terrified of being hit or crushed or trampled on. Everyone tried to sit down so we could show the police we were non-aggressive, but that didn’t work. It was total panic.

The police must have charged again, because we were then on the other side of their line, so we grabbed the hands of the women we were next to to make a run out the front of a tunnel. A protester was lying still, face down on the ground in front of us. We tried to leave but someone said we were safer where we were.

Eventually we managed to retreat backwards and we realised they had stopped the march behind us so that there was only about 100 of us down there. We were then released so we progressed out of the underpass towards Kensington, by now cut off from the main march and ringed as a group by riot police.

There were injuries, but mostly we were shocked, we had done nothing wrong, illegal or provocative. We came to the conclusion we had been taken down the underpass deliberately because the police panicked. They wanted to frighten us, but it just turned an otherwise peaceful protest into a hostile and volatile situation.

When we got to the Israeli Embassy most of the main march had dispersed, it was dark and the atmosphere was angry. We felt so frustrated that no media would have seen the violence of the police, but would see the culmination of hostilities at the Embassy, that we rang some of the news media to tell them. The Met had a statement ready: ‘one charge’ they said, using ‘proportionate’ tactics, which was not our experience.

We didn’t know then that as we demonstrated, the Israeli government was preparing its troops for a land invasion, where undoubtedly many more civilians will die and the prospect of peace looks further out of reach. We will keep coming back, with many thousands of others too, and standing up for peace and justice for Palestine.

Written by Marie Ainsley from stopwar site published on the IMC ABB

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech