the advantage of being stuck working from home with a bit of manflu (as Palau oh so sympathetically calls it) is that I got to see an awful lot of the coverage of yesterday’s G-20 protests on the various newschannels (BBC1, Sky News, BBC World, Al-Jazeera undsoweiter). What struck me was the discrepancy betweent he images shown and the commentary. the talk was all about the challenges the police faced in “containing” the demo and the calm and mature way they responded to “provocations”, while the images showed a largely peaceful demo, enlivened by the occasional bit of police violence.
Once the RBS windows were smashed the focus changed to speculation about whether or not this would be a “controlled” riot or become “as bad as the May Day riots”. Meanwhile the images seemed to show something that looked suspiciously like the police herding a group of black Bloc meatheads (agents provocateurs?) towards the RBS brach, oddly enough the only bank in the area nmot in lockdown, as if they wanted these demonstrators to smash the windows in…
The police was praised for the way in which they kept control over the demonstration, keeping groups of protestors locked in and only letting a trickle go through; no thought was given to the irritation and anger this caused other than noting that “things got grim”. The assumption that this was at all necesarry was of course never challenged.
From what I saw of police tactics it seems Craig Murray called it:
The Metropolitan Police now have a well rehearsed system for dealing with such events. Each demonstration will be split up into several separated groups. Each group will be tightly corraled, penned in with barriers in an uncomfortable crush that feels threatening to those inside. Occasionally groups will be shuffled between pens. Most demonstrators will not be allowed to the destination point to limit the appearance of numbers at the rallies. Once it is over, people will be kept corralled for several hours, with no refreshment or (this is critical and no joke) toilet facilities.
The tactic appears designed to create confrontation as people try to get out of penned areas to hear the speeches they came to hear, to escape the crush or just to find a loo. At the same time the argie-bargie thus deliberately sparked is confined to small numbers the police can contain.
Dave Hill’s liveblogging of the demo again confirms this.
UPDATE: police tactics of containment get a man killed. Police says that water bottles were thrown at first aid workers. But eye witnesses deny this. Who to believe…