Red Pepper report on Edinburgh protest

Carnival for full policing

Stuart Hodkinson.

After the political whitewash of Saturday's Live 8 and Make Poverty History, today saw the first serious protesting against the G8 summit in Scotland. The non-violent blockade against the Trident nuclear submarine base in Faslane passed off peacefully without incident. But at the originally Carnival of Full Enjoyment in Edinburgh, the streets of the Scottish capital experienced a very different reality with thousands of police shutting down the city and then physically turning on protesters, resulting in over 30 similar injuries when people were forced to jump over spiked railing at West Princes Street Gardens after being baton-charged by riot police.

This was not what protesters had in mind as the midday Carnival in central Edinburgh began. Their aim was to bring together "workers, migrants, students, benefit claimers, New Dealers, work refusers, pensioners, dreamers, duckers & divers" to resist the "daily grind of the institutions that plunge us into overwork, poverty and debt". Protesters were joined by Samba bands and clowns from the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). When five riot vans were seen chasing after a 'gaggle' of 20 clowns near to Edinburgh University, the tone was set for the day.

To their credit, carnival-goers spent the entire afternoon attempting to dance and sing through the city, taking over large parts of Princes Street and the surrounding areas and forcing traffic and shops to close. The carnival attracted thousands of local on-lookers and many hundreds of Edinburgh workers and youths joined the protesters in the streets. It was initially good natured but as numbers began to swell down on Princes Street the trouble began.

Red Pepper witnessed the events as they unfolded. In short, thousands of police officers without official badge numbers engulfed the protesters and persistently shut down the streets with lines of vans, officers in full riot gear and mounted police. Police pens were created, splitting protesters into groups of a few hundred all over the Princes Street area. At specifically timed intervals, baton-wielding police violently charged protesters and crushed them against steel fencing leading to dozens of injuries with some taken to hospital. Having shut down all the roads around the area, a completely unprovoked mounted police charge led to one elderly woman being knocked down. She then suffered some kind of fit and was rushed to hospital. In response, there were isolated incidents of clashes with police, mainly carried out by local youths using the opportunity to throw bricks at the police. Tonight, around 40 people are arrested in police custody. The charges against them are unclear.

As the city finally calmed down again, one thing remained clear: the policing for this G8 is already repressive and violent, and the numbers of police on the streets are completely disproportionate to the numbers of protesters on the streets. Reports on TV tonight of protesters behaving irresponsibly are simply untrue - it was the police who charged protesters and created the pretext for clashes, a fact confirmed by Green MSP Mark Ballard when interviewed on TV news channels tonight.

It was most drefinately the police that instigated the trouble, what hope is there for us when we can't trust our own police?

I cannot tell you how disgusted I am by all of this, there are not enough words in the english dictionarty that can describe.

whoever is in charge of all of this has completely lost the plot

Indymedia and red pepper are intent on presenting an extremely skewed version of events.

I have seen no police "brutality", and let's face it mr green party is a complete unknown in scotland outside of student unions, and was desperate to get his face on TV.

Step down from your ideological high horse and you may actually find that the police did an extremely good job- a view shared by the vast majority of edinburgh people. Funnily enough, not by the petty criminals you are referring to as locals.

Is the last posting from the Met? The Carnival was batton charged! Funny how the media didn't show the puppets, the original good atmosphere etc. Just how the react to all the blockades being all down to a shadowy violent 'group' called the Black Bloc - does this include the Quakers, Hillwalkers etc? Locals=petty criminals - sounds like class war. Lots of locals of all ages got involved with all kinds of solidarity at all of the camps. They are not petty criminals you biggot. And that is what is colouring your post. Good protestor / bad protestor. London bombers = terrorists. G8 = terrorists. No excuses.