as the celebs (including anita roddick, vivienne westwood, annie lennox and bianca jagger) posed for press outside parliament, a plucky group of nine activists staged a blockade by locking-on to heavy concrete props, stopping traffic in parliament square. it took police several hours to finally free the activists. they were all charged with 'obstruction of the highway', and 'unauthorised demonstration', and will appear in court on the 29th march.
later on, cnd held a rally in the square, 'authorised' under sopca from 6pm to 8pm. cyclists passing through dressed as fish were violently stopped on the public road by police and dragged into the square. despite socpa warnings, some cyclists continued their protest without arrest, and this was the police theme of the evening - violence and intimidation (using socpa as the reason) to clear people from the square, but no actual arrests. one female child was held by throat pressure points and an older man was thrown to the ground and suffered a suspected back injury. modern socpa policing!
the film is just over twelve minutes long and is also available in quicktime mp4 format here shortly
recommended viewer 'vlc', widely available, is free for both mac and pc
original report and pics from the lock-on at
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Comments
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Excellent video Rikki.
19.03.2007 07:55
Doug
Mainstream Media
19.03.2007 23:06
Absolutely. It is very strange how they ALWAYS seem to miss a lot of what is going on with protests. On the 15th March the day after these protests the Independent 'newspaper' mentioned ABSOLUTE ZERO about ANY kind of protests against Trident. They had an article inside mentioning rebellion inside the Commons but nothing about CND protests and nothing about any road blockade. Certainly nothing about the kind of police-state-like physical abuse mentioned in the article above.
Instead the Independent has preferred to have their front pages taken up with diversionary articles provoking Zimbabwe opposition groups to submit themselves to torture at the hands of Magabe - very bloody useful.
When I get the time I will download these videos that rikki has posted (I am still on a slow dial-up connection).
Brian B