Authorities Ban Anti-war March

[butchersapron]

So you do want a biscuit?

 

[tim]

So I was right about the historical link with a cathedral. I had always understood that Cambridge was unusual in being granted city status without having a cathedral.

Yes, you were.

 

[Guineveretoo]

So you do want a biscuit?

Oh go on then, but only if they are plain chocolate hobnobs.

ETA And only if you haven't spat on them!

 

[butchersapron]

Sorry, biscuits are for officials only.

 

[Guineveretoo]

Sorry, biscuits are for officials only.

That's okay, I was only being polite in accepting it, anyway.

 

[butchersapron]

I know, that's why i spat on them anyway.

 

[Guineveretoo]

I know, that's why i spat on them anyway.

Bit pointless when you weren't going to let me eat them anyway, don't you think?

 

[butchersapron]

Ther are other officials than yourself you know - even when you're posting in a non-official capacity but on the basis of your experience (hey, what a good idea! Why don't other posters do that?)

 

[Guineveretoo]

Ther are other officials than yourself you know - even when you're posting in a non-official capacity but on the basis of your experience (hey, what a good idea! Why don't other posters do that?)

Do you despise them, too, and not allow for the possibility that they existed before they started working for a trade union?

 

[butchersapron]

I don't despise them - they merely irritate me. Well done on existing by the way! Good 'un.

 

[Guineveretoo]

Okay, I think everyone must be bored by this now, so let's move on, shall we? It's been... well... it's been

 

[TremulousTetra]

A suggestion doing the rounds is that protestors defy the ban ... dressed as Buddhist monks!

Oh thats a beauty.

 

[Groucho]

A suggestion doing the rounds is that protestors defy the ban ... dressed as Buddhist monks!

It seems possible that some actual Buddhist monks could lead the protest.

Tony Benn has written to the Home Secretary supporting defiance of the ban.

The legislation the police are actually quoting is that used 20 years ago against students but not used since.

 

[Guineveretoo]

It seems possible that some actual Buddhist monks could lead the protest.

Tony Benn has written to the Home Secretary supporting defiance of the ban.

The legislation the police are actually quoting is that used 20 years ago against students but not used since.

So they are not quoting SOCPA?

That's interesting. Source?

 

[butchersapron]

Tony Benn has written to the Home Secretary supporting defiance of the ban.

We're all set then.

 

[newbie]

The legislation the police are actually quoting is that used 20 years ago against students but not used since.

from memory it was previously used against one of the anti-Cruise demos, possibly the day they arrived.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Im sure the legisaltion was used a few times in the 80s. The march I was on was in October or November 1984.

I like the budhist monk idea.

 

[detective-boy]

So demo's are banned from the entire Borough while Parliament is sitting - that's not correct, is it?

No.

 

[detective-boy]

There is an area designated by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act,

I'm not sure if there is an actual area defined for Sessional Orders or, if there is, whether it is the same as the SOCPA defined area. I have a vague recollection of something like a mile being the sessional orders area but I am not sure.

The SOCPA offences and rules are, however, entirely seperate from the Sessional Order powers which have existed for years and continue to do so.

 

[winjer]

The StWC defied the ban with a non-agreed protest in Parly Square shortly after SOCPA was introduced...

Well, almost. They negotiated their anti-SOCPA demo with the police, as they always do. Strangely none of the organisers were arrested, only participants

 

[winjer]

I'm not sure if there is an actual area defined for Sessional Orders or, if there is, whether it is the same as the SOCPA defined area. I have a vague recollection of something like a mile being the sessional orders area but I am not sure.

Considerably bigger than SOCPA: "East side of the River Thames between Waterloo and Vauxhall Bridges, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Victoria Street (between Vauxhall Bridge Road and Buckingham Palace Road), Grosvenor Gardens, Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly, Coventry Street, New Coventry Street, Leicester Square (north side), Cranbourn Street, Long Acre, Bow Street, Wellington Street, crossing Strand and Victoria Embankment to Waterloo Bridge."

There are no Sessional Order 'powers' though.

 

[winjer]

The organising committee was infiltrated by coppers and there really were more coppers there than demonstrators because they knew exactly what was going on and when.

Plain clothes cops were in the same pub as one group of demonstrators the night before - hardly the same as coppers infiltrating anything - and their failure to know what was going on and when was obvious from them spending £300,000 deploying 800 police for ~500 protesters. Bob Broadhurst, head of Public Order Branch, later justified the operation on the grounds that they had expected "anything up to guerilla warfare on the streets of Westminster."