‘Mayday! Mayday!’ Smash EDO Brighton: anti-war march clashes with police

Well done Smash EDO - the protest caused sufficient disruption to convey the message and produced an interesting game of cat-and-mouse with the pigs. Also wins the prize for most surreal moment in a demo - walking across a park with protestors on one side of the bowling green and riot cops running along the other side and a small group of elderly people quietly getting on with their game of bowls in the middle. Class.
I must add the filth were not on their best behaviour - batoning people for no reason and generally behaving like the unthinking thugs they really are. Probably not as bad as usual but still a fair sprinkling of gratuitous violence. Mind you, I personally enjoyed cycling straight through a line of riot cops on the seafront.
Keep it up Smash EDO.

Why, why WHY do protesters throw things at animals? Police horses and police dogs?

These animals are NOT the police!

They are USED by the police!

I disagree with police animals being used like this but the people who throw things at them, sometimes killing them deserve a fucking good hiding.

Remove this if you must...it isn't a pro police posting but an anti wanker one. Only wankers hurt animals or think it's OK to support the scum that do!

I wish that the police would STOP abusing police horses and dogs by using them as riot control. ...

Mandy Ford.

Camden

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV9J5q3K0r4

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8_WnsucEWk

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H357JIHT8As

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV9J5q3K0r4

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGyaI8e_8Hg

Why do protesters throw things at animals? Because they don't wish to be trampled or attacked, most likely.

Get a grip.

Mandy, please don't believe everything you hear on the news. ITN/BBC ad all the others lie when it comes to protests and campaigns. Your campaign will soon suffer these lies at their hands so please don't believe them when they are directed at other campaigns.

senseless mandy, senseless. id rather kick a dog than get bitten by it, bite worse than a kick.

BECAUSE a horse will never hurt human being, the horse is so sympathetic animal that whatever cops will try to lead them on , they won't hurt ya, but fuckin horrible shity bastard cops cover the eyes for horses so they can't see ya and when cop leads horse forward, then horse simply go there. ONE VERY GOOD and tested technique is to jump with a group causing a sort of noise when you hit the ground together, that even the highly trained horse will not withstand that fear.

...and now something a bit different...
 http://itn.co.uk/news/37f47a149807448d18bb9dacbeb6efd3.html

Oh, I see, is that why the police have also covered their eyes?

FFS, get a grip...

You animal rights nuts really need to get a grip.... if a dog is fucking attacking you then you have free reign to kick the vicious thing.

please ignore her rants

that is a cracking photo!

Biggest one so far, which was great - nice to see this campaign staying confrontational, committed and on the ball after 4 years and intense police interference, and not co-opted by the more docile and domesticated of the protest movements... however, something that occurred to me about this high level of confrontationalism is that we still have to keep it bound to a real message. it's all well and good for us to swarm down to brighton once or twice a year for a good ruck with the cops - gods know they've had it too easy from us for a long time - but if we can have a 2,000 strong demo march past a relatively right-on city centre like Brighton, and still have the crowd not know what the demo's about, then have we wasted some of our time? chants resounded throughout the day of 'whose streets? our streets!' damn right, but let's only celebrate our right to freedom of expression if we then use that freedom to express our ideas. i'm not saying we should have an SWP/STWC or WDFLA centralised approach where the 'organisers' of the demo hand out identikit placards and uniforms right at the outset, and tell everyone what today's slogans are to be, but maybe we can all be a bit more imaginative and proactive in thinking about presenting our message to passersby - banners, costumes, music, loudspeakers. the pushboard about kicking the arms trade out of brighton was well-aimed, so to speak, but generally only legible if you happen to be looking from the point of view of a copper's belt or baton. there was only a few people chanting everyone now and again 'Smash EDO' which is sortof a naff and uninformative chant, but at least more approriate than confirming whose streets these may or not be. the cat and mouse element was great in terms of swarming and small groups tactics, in that they want to divide and parcel us off into various kettles, and we managed to persistently evade this and stay agile and alert - but a shame that not too many of the day's targets got their just desserts, and i'm more to blame for this than some. the focus on the police though reminded me in a way of the relationship between modern day hunt sabs and the hunt... before, the sabs' job was to interfere and save the fox, and the hunt's job was to do whatever they damn well please, whereas since the so-called ban, now the hunts generally waste their tame evading the antis and their cameras instead of getting down to important business of blood-letting. and it seems to me that we spent more time avoiding and outfoxing the police on the day, rather than conveying our message and smashing EDO. was the day a success on that score, or was it a draw? chucking empty beer cans and shoving cops doesn't rid us of any police, but does make us look like either violent thugs or not committed enough to violence to make a difference, depending on your point of view. they have armour, weapons and training for fuck sake - so if we're gonna risk arrests and beatings to fight them, let's at least do it properly, and pick our battlegrounds carefully, or not do it at all. comments on throwing missiles are similar to others' here - let's not brick the horses, but let's not brick the frontline protesters on their backs either, that will be nice. and a big thanks go out to the crackshot who whitewashed our affinity group with the paint bucket, too!

But despite that tirade of negativity, all in all, was a tiring but good day, and glad to be hearing about autonomous actions that coincided, too

Still, perhaps the opportunity of the upcoming anarchist conference might be well-used to all sit down and have a serious discussion of tactics for the coming years

Why do people attack police dogs and horses?

Generally because - through no fault of their own - said dogs and horses are attacking us. Yes, they shouldn't be made to, and yes, the blame lies with the police; but given a choice between getting trampled to death and defending yourself I would always support the latter, whether the tramplers are human or not.

Mandy is right, the horses didn't deserve the missiles any more than the protesters in the front line did - at least the protesters chose to be there and could take preventative measures like wearing helmets like many did. On the Ditchling Rise part of the march (the road going up the hill) away from the town centre the horses were not attacking or stampeding yet this is where most of the horses were hit.

This seems to have been an unwelcome development in the Smash Edo demos, which could have been anticipated and largely prevented without resorting to Stop the War/SWP-type stewarding tactics. I did see one protester berate someone for throwing missiles at the horses but didn't witness any other such peer pressure. Libertarianism is fine but not when animals and front line protesters are being hit by those supposed to be on the same side.

I agree we need to sort out the attacks on the horses; it was just a few people lobbing stuff from the back however it was all our faults for not doing more to stop them. I was yelling “don’t throw stuff at the horses” but there was probably more I could have done. We must think on how to deal with this.

It‘s not the sort of thing we are about! The horses, as has been said before, were just sanding still and they don’t choose to be there. The majority of us are not people that attack animals and the minority that do (after a warning) should lose the respect and protection of our groups; if necessary I feel they have to be removed.

Chucking stuff at police horses (not in self defence) or incompetently so that people further forward get hit is not so easily dealt with if it's done by local kids who've just joined in randomly and are a bit pissed. That was the case with the only instance I saw from near enough to be certain. Police provocateurs are the other people who do this, though I doubt if the lad in question was one of those.

It was certainly made clear to him that this wasn't on, especially as he'd hit someone further forward. Remonstating with someone afterwards doesn't stop it happening another time, though.

The only way I can think of to prevent it isn't SWP style stewards telling people what to do, but maybe friendly people who tag along with folks who've just joined in because it's a lot more exciting than what usually happens in their town centre. That way, there would be someone to help distinguish between what's sensible, what's brave but worth doing if you're up for it, and what's just fucking stupid and grist for the Daily Mail and the cops' PR operation.

A lot of animal rights posters on here... aren't animal rights, wanker trolls, pigs and fascists trying to enforce stereotypes in order to split the movements, first thing i read in the paper was about the horses being attacked.
I wasn't their so can't comment on what happened. but I've seen it before where what i believe to be one person posting whole conversations using different pseudonyms.
Ignore bollox.
its wrong to hit horses and dogs, unless in REAL self defense situations.
watch out for anyone on indy calling for action against other activists, with no factual bases or reference.

@ vegan -animal rights

I'm not a cop and anyone that was on the demo would have seen the bottles being lobbed at the horses, it was done by a very small number of people but it still happened. 3 of us (all ARAs) on the way back home were talking about it and what could be done about it. The fact it happened is everyone's problem (including mine) I called for it to stop but I probably could have done more.

@ Stroppyoldgit

I don't know if we need stewards we just need an attitude that doesn't tolerate it and if people do it after warnings maybe we should treat them the same as if a cop was in the middle of our demo. I'm not that physically strong but would certainly help if there were enough of us, in the same way as I took some of the attacks from the cops.

Nice one everyone, you're all amazing :)

I do agree tho, that we need to communicate with the public more. Bystanders who hadn't already heard of EDO probably wouldn't have had a clue why we were there. The small 'shut ITT' flags and foot placards were nice, but too small really for people to see from a distance. It's a shame there weren't many large banners - there were only 3 or 4 of them, and almost all were in the black bloc...it's hard for us to function effectively as a black bloc while also being the only ones carrying massive banners, so it would've been nice if more people had brought some along!

I think this is a very important issue. A friend of mine was hit just below the eye with a stone. Whoever threw it could potentially have killed her had the stone hit her somewhere worse.
Stone throwing was completely out of order as it played directly into the hands of the police.

I don't have a problem per se with stone throwing at police if it is necessary to keep them back and you and your mates are in danger, but at the end of the day, we are not violent thugs, they are, and we shouldn't start violence unnecessarily.

The worst thing is that the people throwing didn't have the guts to go to the frontline themselves, but instead put others at risk.

And to be fair, everyone I spoke to about it, had challenged stone throwers whenever they could, and taken stones off them.

I had to stop some people throwing beer bottles at the horses, it was totally uncalled for. And again, I can understand violence against an animal that endangers your life, but the fact the horses are abused by ther police to be there is bad enough in the first place.

Whoever the stone throwers are, they are misguided, cowardly, idiots who put people they should be protecting, at risk. They are not welcome.

Don't throw from the back!

Where the fuck has this throwing from the back come from? I know it has always happened, but it has always been looked down upon. Now it seems to be happening more and more.

If you want to throw stuff at the filth (and I have absolutely no problem with that, I'm not here to pacify people) then do it from a position where you will actually hit them - rather than hitting someone with the courage to be on the frontline.

I was not at that demo, but I have been to demos with horses and dogs. I have also worked with horses up close and see the police dogs up close. They are not your "normal" animals, they go throw a lot of training and a lot of them are cut. For the horses they get cut if they can't step on someone or kick them. Yes horses can be mean and they get the Alfa ones and train them to be robots, the dogs are the same. You have to remember that only 10% or less of the animals make it throw the training & the rest are killed or sent to other places. It would take a very long time and a lot of hard work to bring the animal back to close to "normal".
I don't feel bad about someone hitting them because they are like the riot cops, nazi and military special units. Yes they are people and animals deep down but they have lost so much that we can't see them as nothing more then the enemy. I will hit a cop or throw a stone and him and the same goes for there equipment will get smashed, including the horses and dogs.
The best thing for the horse is to throw small steels balls (barings) under it's legs and let it charge and some thumbtacks down where the dogs are running. Also bikes are great to stop horses because you can put them in there legs or roll them under there chest.

I know I have a lot of animal rights people attacking me but until they can find a better way to stop the cops from using them. We will still have to defend our selfs

There are too many incidences of people throwing things at police animals. As for "Mandy is not the voice of AR please ignore her rants"...these postings are popping up from the same person. Bit of jealousy or something? ; )

There are too many incidences of people throwing things at police animals. As for "Mandy is not the voice of AR please ignore her rants"...these postings are popping up from the same person. Bit of jealousy or something? ; )