It seems that I just came across your blog at a good time. (You might remember me from hanging out in Fibbers in the mid 90s).

It depends on how its manifested. Just like 99% of people in anti-war protests behave appropriately, the same applies to gay rights marches. Unfortunately you always get the extremists who go OTT by violating public order / decency laws.

Marching for the rights of homosexuals is fine. But using such marches as an excuse for acting lewd in public is not ok. That’s where much of the criticism stems from.

we all need to learn a lesson from Goldman

The Poll Tax march was notable because of the large number of first time protestors/marchers; many old ladies and young families with children, who had never done this sort of thing before, were on this march.

We were all peacefully progressing up Whitehall from Parliament Square when suddenly the police threw two cordons across the marchers, one at the Parliament Square end and the other half way up Whitehall. Those of us caught up between these two police lines were instructed by the police to leave. While the crowd around us dispersed, I and fellow BECTU marchers stayed on to see what they were up to (Tony Lennon had his binoculars with him.) Once most marchers from the cordoned off section had gone, a line of mounted police suddenly appeared from the Downing Street/Horse Guards side of Whitehall and rode across the bottom end of the police cordon. The marchers beyond this line, moving towards Trafalgar Square were totally orderly and peaceful, but despite this the police began driving their horses into the crowd. It was particularly appalling because we could see (through Tony’s binoculars) that there were small children and toddlers in push-chairs directly in the path of the police horses. Naturally the marchers then started to try to defend themselves from this totally unprovoked onslaught and began hurling placards and the sticks from placards back at the mounted police in response.

It was subsequently reported that the demonstrators had started the trouble.

On retreating up the side roads up towards Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square, I witnessed yet further police provocation. I saw police vans being driven up the side roads at alarming speed, towards and into the crowds in Trafalgar Square.

The question is, who is really manipulating such police behavior and orchestrating the consequent trouble ? It was apparent that the Thatcher government wanted negative reporting about the marchers/protestors on the Poll Tax demo. This and the recent G20 demo were both in stark contrast to the first Stop the War demo. That march passed without incident, despite the record numbers attending. The Stop the War march demonstrated that the British public can, and is able to protest in an orderly and peaceful way when allowed to do so. Similarly the police are more than capable of maintaining orderly crowd control, where there is a political will for this to happen!

If you want a light hearted way of getting the message across to the Metropolitan police that it is not acceptable to hold peaceful protesters in this way – just send them your old kettle!

”
Disposing of your old kettle in an environmentally friendly way is difficult. Since the police seem to like kettles so much help them out by sending your old kettle to:

Metropolitan Police Service
New Scotland Yard
Broadway
London
SW1H 0BG

Pass the idea on to anyone you know who has an old kettle they want to get rid of or who wants to protest against police tactics.”

“kettle the met” has a Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=82210837463