Ten anti-monarchists, young socialists and anarchists, have been stopped, searched, surrounded and detained by police near Trafalgar Square.

12.50pm, Friday 29 April: This morning about ten anti-monarchy protesters, students and young workers who are mostly socialists and anarchists, were stopped by the police outside Charing Cross station, searched and handcuffed. When we left to write this report, they had been held outside the station for about an hour.

Trafalgar Square was tightly controlled, with the help of the police, and it was not actually possible to protest. The group of comrades were preparing to leave to attend the Republic street party in Holborn when the police stopped and searched them. Another thirty police were then called in, arriving in four vans, and surrounded them.

This paranoid, over the top action by the police is part of a wider assault on civil liberties in the run up to the royal wedding.