Why did the police punish bystanders?
Rob was a predictably tedious anarchist, with tediously predictable views
“They aren’t here for us, they’re here for the bankers,” he told me. “But mainly, they are here for a fight.”
Not only was Rob wrong, I told him, he was the worst kind of wrong — a clichéd wrong. Seven hours later — seven hours of detention without food or water — I had come to believe that I was the one who had been naive.
story of how a largely peaceful protest that happily coexisted with a Starbucks and an HSBC
eventually turned violent. Most of all, it is the story of how the police wilfully criminalised and alienated 4,000 innocent people.
they enacted a long-planned strategy — trapping and detaining all the protesters, violent
Once established, the cordon slowly squeezed — each police charge rolling past any protesters who refused to move, battering them. No one was released. If I were to design a system to provoke and alienate, I could not do better.
clipped from: www.timesonline.co.uk 