This is an open letter to Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe. We invite a response, which, if received, we will publish in full. Dear Mr Hogan-Howe, I attended your talk at the London School of Economics last night. Amidst the management-speak and froth, a single statistic that you mentioned caught my attention. “Young [...]
Yesterday’s news that the Met is giving its officers access to plastic bullets for tomorrow’s student demonstration is, obviously, pretty disturbing. I’d guess it’s pretty unlikely they’ll actually be used – making a big announcement to the press two days before the event looks a lot more like an attempt to warn off any would-be [...]
Question: When far left groups talk about “confronting” the EDL, as the AWL do in their analysis of the protests in East London on Saturday, what exactly do they mean? I ask this because I’m increasingly getting the unpleasant impression that far too much discussion of how to deal with the EDL and their ilk [...]
It was about 10 PM last night when I arrived at a police barricade, just south of Tottenham police station. At that point there was a crowd of around 500, men and women of all ages. Most were there in anger, some were onlookers, and others were just trying to get home. A couple of [...]
Your starter for 10: Which voice of Britain’s embattled public sector workers said this yesterday? We acknowledge that some cuts are necessary due to the parlous state of the country’s finances, but we feel greatly let down that we are not considered to be a protected priority area by the government. They have and will [...]
Last December I reported on proposals to give police new powers to take down websites. Nominet – the umbrella body that manages all domain names ending in .uk (ie .co.uk and .org.uk) – has, at police request, been reconsidering the terms under which it blocks websites. Under new proposals, a “request from an identified UK Law [...]
It’s safe to say that relations between the police and the activist left – the revolutionary left in particular – are generally somewhat less than cordial. So with that in mind, it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of reaction yesterday’s news of eye-watering cuts to officers’ wages and the possibility of a [...]
It should, I think, be uncontroversial to state that using a chemical agent that does this to peaceful protestors is pretty fucked up, to say the least. I was at the UKUncut Boots action on Sunday, and the sight of innocent people staggering blindly around while screaming in pain through tears and mucus is not [...]
A doctor who gave medical assistance to protesters on 9th Dec has spoken of the police risking a ‘Hillsborough-type’ disaster on Westminster Bridge: The anaesthetist from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, who gave medical assistance to the protesters, said that officers forced demonstrators into such a tight “kettle” on Westminster Bridge that they were in danger of [...]
Meet Eric. He’s an ordinary schoolboy who lives at 29 Acacia Road. But what most people don’t know about Eric is that he leads something of a double life. For whenever Eric eats a banana, an amazing transformation occurs. You see, Eric is Bananaman. I felt a bit like Eric today, running from my city [...]
