Its about time we reclaim our 'right' or i would say will to protest! The requirement to prearrange a protest route with the cops, the use of railings and cop blockades to determine where a protestor can and cannot go, and lastly the collaboration of the activist police (namely stewards) with the cops not only restrict the will to protest but they are diametrically opposed and thus revoke any will to protest! I call on anybody who wants to witness in their lifetime any social change to tear down police railings wherever they are in a demonstration, to have illegal demos whenever they can, to constantly challenge pigs and activist pigs on their role of crowd control and to propagate whenever and wherever they can the idea -ideal that the streets must belong to us, us who want to LIVE not merely consume!

Did you have to give your name at the police station? Did they take DNA? Is it actually your right not to give name and address under section 60?

Section 60 Criminal Justics and Public Order Act

When a section 60 order is in place the police have the right to search anybody order for weapons (and confiscate any weapons they find) in the locality where they consider an outbreak of disorder may occur. They have the right to ask you to remove facial coverings if they suspect it is being used to conceal your identity. Refusual to remove facial covering may end in your arrest.

You are NOT obliged to give your name or address under this section. You should NOT be compelled or forced to have your photograph taken (this does not mean the police do not have the right to take your photograph).

Section 50 Police Reform Act
This makes it an offence to refuse to give your name and address to the police if they consider you to be using "anti-social behaviour". Anti-social behaviour is defined as anything that may cause alarm harrassment or distress to someone.

You don't have to give your details under section 60. You do, however, under section 50 which is probably why he got arrested under a different section. But there is no justification to change the section without warning just to facilitate arrest.

They asked for my name and I said that I didn't want to give it and asked them if I'd get arrested if I didn't give it and the copper kept saying "possibly". I said, "that's not much use is it?" In the end I got fed up and gave him my name. But I have quite an unusual name and he didn't ask me to spell it. This proves to me that all they were really interested in was causing as much inconvenience and hassle for the protesters as possible out of vindictiveness and also to dissuade good upstanding citizens like myself (I must be, they kept calling me "Sir") from going to the next demo. What they don't seem to realise is that it has the opposite effect. Coralling people (including kids, old folks) for 5 hrs on a freezing January night and repeating the same message "to be patient" over and over again only makes me less patient. This is the sort of heavy handed policing that happened at the Bush demo a few months ago and is a sign to me that the cops are ratcheting up their anti-social behaviour.