In the beginning, we were four. We turned up at the US Embassy at 12.30 with the intention of marking the anniversary of 9/11 with a vigil to remember all those who were killed or injured on this day 10 years ago and all those who have been killed and injured since in the terror that has been wreaked largely in the name of 'war on terror'. As we approached, it became apparent that the whole square was fenced off, with cops at every barricade, and that an event involving 'dignitaries', who turned out to be David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Prince Charles, was about to happen. We visited two corners of the square to examine the prospects for vigiling behind the fences, then decided to head round to a third, which would take us alongside the Embassy on its south side.

By this time we seemed to have attracted the attention of the cops but, having nothing to hide, we carried on meandering towards our destination. The trouble started when we moved our banner from one rucksack to another and split up, one of us heading off alone (now minus the banner) to meet someone. He was chased (or at least the cops ran after him) and then stopped and searched right opposite a bunch of EDL supporters, while we continued to be followed and, as we stopped by the Embassy, were 'detained for the purpose of a search on suspicion of carrying offensive weapons' or words to that effect. The cops were vague about what power was being used - we can only presume that they had been told to detain us without knowing the grounds... likely unlawful - and said we had to wait under 'detention' until they could get someone to come along and explain the legal basis for this. Perhaps they were still trying to decide. In the end they came up with Section 1 of PACE.

The 'reasonable' grounds for suspecting that they would find prohibited articles such as offensive weapons were, allegedly (1) that we had asked a police officer at the other side of the square whether it had been cordoned off because there were dignitaries attending - highly suspicious! Just the sort of thing someone carrying offensive weapons would do! (2) because we had transferred 'something' between rucksacks, and (3) because we'd passed a pub full of EDL supporters twice in our wanderings round the square. Additionally, we seemed to have caused the cops some categorisation difficulties, not being obviously EDL or Muslim. Sergeant Storey of Hackney Police Station tried his best to convey the cops' predicament and how our appearance and behaviour had confused them. 'We didn't know what group you belonged to. You were all wearing black but you didn't look like Black Bloc.' Whatever that police guide to spotting 'troublemakers' looks like, we weren't on it.

There was speculation that the cops might have a quota of searches to carry out (do they still have those targets?) and could have been keen to perform these on a harmless looking bunch like us rather than on drunk EDL thugs or sober but angry Muslims. While we were hanging round waiting to be searched, we began the vigil anyway and held up our banner.

After the searches turned up nothing offensive, weaponry or otherwise, we were declared undetained and, when they'd finished faffing about completing record of search forms for a couple of us and telling the others that they'd have to go and collect them from Hackney Police Station or write in for them (an interesting suggestion given that some of us had declined to provide our details including our names and addresses), we were left in peace to get on with the vigil. We ignored the cops' initial direction that we'd have to conduct the vigil from inside their pen round the corner and stood our ground where we were, just as well since shortly afterwards the cops herded about 50 EDL supporters into the pen they'd been pointing us towards. Nice.

While Boris and Cameron and Charles were doing their speechifying under marquees in the Square, we held our vigil to the accompaniment of a lament played on fiddle and a background din from the angry Muslims with a megaphone at one side of the Embassy and the EDL who needed no amplification at the other. It wasn't exactly conducive to concentration and silent reflection, but all eight of us - the majority Catholic Workers - felt that it was a good thing to do and were glad we'd been there to mark the occasion with something other than hatred or cynical exploitation of other people's suffering for political gain.

We stayed for a couple of hours altogether, during which time the suits left, most of the EDL had wandered off from the pen to tank up, pee or cause trouble elsewhere, and the Muslim contingent was still going strong. For the last half hour I did manage to switch off from the external distractions and consider the events of 9/11, the loss of life on that day and all the bloodshed since. It is so huge, so terrible and it's not getting any better... I was getting upset, so I spent the final few minutes trying to think positively about how I can spend the next ten years working more productively for peace than the last ten. I don't have the answers yet, but hopefully they will come. The banner text gives some pointers:

Mourn the Dead. Heal the Wounded. End the Wars!