A HUNDRED thousand workers, students and youth rallied in Whitehall in central London on Saturday and more than 70 were arrested as they attempted to march to the BBC HQ in Portland Place W1.
The demonstration was called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and five other pro-Palestine Groups and had originally been called to assemble outside the BBC headquarters in protest against the BBC’s biased reporting of the Gaza genocide.
However, the Metropolitan Police announced last week that it would not be allowed and the organisers gave in, cancelling the march and instead called a rally in Whitehall, which was to be followed by a ‘walk towards the BBC’.
When the ‘walk’ up Whitehall reached Trafalgar Square, police attacked it and arrested over 70 of pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Summary of events after we broke through the police line – on the spot report from Richard Bayfield
Once the police line was breached at the top of Whitehall people streamed towards Trafalgar Square.
Finding Cockspur Street blocked the crowd headed towards Pall Mall East at the top of Trafalgar Square which was blocked with police vans and a line of Met officers where they violently arrested Chris Nineham, PSC Chief Steward.
10-20 officers stormed aggressively into the crowd knocking him to the ground.
Surrounded by protesters they fought their way back to the police vans, the sheer volume of people at this point threatened to break the police line.
At this point everyone sat down and refused to move.
Ben Jamal, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell appeared on the scene and convinced the protesters to back away.
This was the moment that the march could have broken out of Trafalgar Square but it was quickly lost at the behest of the PSC.
Attention then focused on Charing Cross Road by St Martins in the Fields, which saw a stand-off with the road blocked by riot vans.
The protesters then moved to Duncannon St and were met with the same response.
At this point the Met started moving among the crowd informing them a Section 14 of the Public Order Act was in place and if they didn’t move they faced arrest.
Lines of police formed on the east side of Trafalgar Square, moving the crowd towards the roundabout on the south side.
Here we were met with another line of police effectively blocking our exit and forming a kettle.
More had been kettled at the roundabout and at least 10 people were led away whilst I was in the kettle.
Many members of the press, at least 10, were confined in the kettle and refused permission to leave even though they carried a press card.
Eventually card carrying members of the press, and myself, were allowed to leave at which point the police started arresting those left of which there were about 20.
The Met had obviously set out from the start to police this protest as aggressively as possible. One officer was overheard saying they had been told to arrest as many people as possible.
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