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From: Spike (spikey@kraakpand.nl) Date: 02 May 2001 13:15 uur
BY DANIEL MCGRORY, STEWART TENDLER, ANDREW NORFOLK AND SAM LISTER
CLASHES and damage in the May Day protests were kept to a minimum yesterday by 6,000 police officers and heavy rain.
The worst of the trouble erupted when around 3,000 demonstrators tried to battle their way out of Oxford Circus, where they had been contained for several hours by a solid phalanx of police. They hurled bricks and bottles at officers, including those on horseback, as they tried to escape along side streets.
More that 12 police officers suffered minor injuries and one police horse was hurt. Some of the crowd tried to set fire to a department store and six police found themselves momentarily trapped by a gang of masked protesters.
Mike Todd, the Assistant Commissioner who was in overall command of the £1.2 million police operation, said that his men had “only used proportionate force” when they came under attack from a barrage of missiles.
“As we feared, there was a hard core of around 1,000 who tried to burn down buildings and cause havoc. We have seen people standing on roofs throwing slabs of metal at police and that is not acceptable,” he said.
Two police were injured and a protester was seriously hurt after he fell off a roof.
The anti-capitalist groups will claim credit for bringing much of the West End to a standstill, with 6,000 protesters, costing businesses up to £20 million in lost trade.
Among the 42 people arrested, mainly for drugs and public order offences, police said that eight were foreign nationals, from America, Poland, Denmark and Belgium. Police said one of those arrested was a 12-year-old boy, who was drunk and disorderly.
Scotland Yard’s tactic from first light was to overwhelm the protesters with a show of force and keep anarchist leaders from their threat to cause bloodshed and widescale destruction. Some of those marooned in Oxford Street tore fittings from shop fronts to use as weapons, and ripped out CCTV cameras, which they used as missiles. After being contained for more than five hours members of the group were released one-by-one.
After sunset there were ugly scenes in Tottenham Court Rd, where a number of store and bank windows, which were not protected by police, were smashed. A number of cars were overturned and bonfires were lit in side streets.
Politicians and Scotland Yard know, however, that they will face questions about whether they over-reacted with this massive show of force involving 6,000 police. Senior officers believe their zero tolerance approach stemmed the worst of the planned violence.
At the start of what was billed as a day of action, the police and loose coalition of protest groups had the heart of London to themselves as commuters, day trippers, shoppers and tourists stayed away. Demonstrators arriving for their early morning bicycle ride to obstruct the morning rush hour found businesses and banks boarded up, shops closed and streets deserted. Whatever pledges were made about “business as usual”, many businesses had clearly thought it prudent to tell staff to work from home.
All the main bridges and roads were kept under close surveillance from first light with police unsure how many protest sympathisers would arrive. The shrill blast of whistles signalled the first event of the day as hundreds of cyclists in fancy dress moved noisily along the Euston Road.
Their early exuberance evaporated in the steady rain and finding themselves vastly outnumbered by police, who searched them for concealed weapons and demanded that they prove their identities before being allowed to leave.
Scotland Yard set the tone for the day by making early arrests in what was a well rehearsed operation to use overwhelming numbers to steer the demonstrators to where they could be contained and controlled.
Tempers frayed when the police moved in on a hooded group of anarchists as they prepared to leave their makeshift headquarters in a disused bacon factory in Bermondsey.Some taunted officers as the mainly teenage crowd were ordered to remove “Tony Blair” masks and other disguises.
The first deliberate show of defiance came in mid-morning when a crowd calling itself the Critical Mass decided to hold a musical interlude in the middle of Euston Road for half an hour, paralysing traffic. A wedge of police moved in and shepherded the mainly good-natured crowd to a side street, where they would be less of an obstruction.
The protesters were monitored on television screens inside Scotland Yard’s command centre. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, were among the visitors to the centre.
There was a momentary panic when a gang of around 30 youths broke away from a protest in Trafalgar Square and charged towards the glassfronted offices of the accountants Pricewaterhouse Cooper.
The group tried to burst into the building but were forced back by police and security guards. Its members joined the gradual drift away from all other sites on the protesters’ May Day Monopoly board and slowly drifted towards Oxford Street.
They may have hoped to catch police off-guard by arriving hours earlier than expected, but the 1,500 demonstrators found themselves swiftly corralled in Oxford Circus where they hurled insults and Monopoly money but seemed unsure what to do next.
After police had cordoned off all escape routes the mood soured and the fighting began — at least eight people were led away with blood pouring from head wounds. Leading some of the charges against the police were two radical Turkish groups and at least three Eastern Europeans, who tried to stop the police from filming them.
Through a police loud hailer members of the crowd were told that they were being detained to prevent a breach of the peace and damage to property and that they would be released “in due course”.
In a final attempt to wrest control of the day anarchist leaders tried to force their way towards Trafalgar Square but were met with yet more police reinforcements.
Elsewhere the May 1 protests passed off peacefully. Police in Manchester adopted the same tactic as in London and controlled where the protesters were allowed to move. In Glasgow the procession of demonstrators was allowed to go where they wanted and there were no arrests.
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