Defend the Right to Protest

Read Nadine El Elenany’s article on the policing of protests from 33 years ago to now. … Read entire article »

Defend the Right to Protest Campaign’s statement on the acquittals of brothers, Andrew and Christopher Hilliard. … Read entire article »

We may not have had the opportunity to declare victory on the steps of Kingston Crown Court on Wednesday, and it may be that this will be a longer battle than we may have hoped for, but what is certain is that we are no less determined or confident that Alfie will finally win justice. Until then we must all stand with him, now more than ever, we are all Alfie Meadows.  By Rachel Harger … Read entire article »

Read and sign the Defend the Right to Protest statement on the hung jury in the case of Alfie Meadows, as well as the wide range of statements sent in to support Alfie Meadows. We demand justice for Alfie Meadows! … Read entire article »

[At the risk of doing an injustice to the other defendants and their excellent barristers, I’m going to focus on Alfie’s examination-in-chief, cross-examination and Mansfield’s closing speech. There are important details in the defence of the other defendants, but I’ll leave these until after the trial has finished. Also it would make this report longer than it is already.] Day 8 saw the examination-in-chief and cross-examination of Alfie. Michael Mansfield QC began his examination of Alfie with a couple of observations. Referring to the recent David Hockney exhibition ‘A Bigger Picture’, Mansfield suggested that one of the interesting things about this exhibition was Hockney’s use of trees, and then when you get up close to see the details (and he asked the jury here to bear in mind the … Read entire article »

Join the demonstration against Bernard Hogan Howe at UEL next week. Full details available here! … Read entire article »

Updates on our support for recent campaigns including Christopher Alder, UFFC, Trayvon Martin and UEL Demonstration against MET Commissioner: Bernard Hogan Howe   … Read entire article »

Court Report days 5-7 Sorry for the delay: everything goes by the lawyers and they are understandably having a break after their 12 (at least) hour days, so this is a bit late. [The level of detail over the past few days has been way too much to compact into useful posts here, but extensive notes have been taken, and there’s a lot we can and will say following the conclusion of the trial about what the police decided to do on the day in relation to baton use, mounted units, the various containments of the day, including the kettling on Westminster Bridge at the end of the evening, how police communicated what they were doing to the crowd (or not), the protections in place for vulnerable people at the … Read entire article »

[Understandably, the barristers and the judge in the case are getting very anxious about contempt: anyone writing about the trial has been strongly advised to stick to a brief outline of the facts. The judge is a lot more worried about print publications than he is about the internet, though, but nevertheless reminded the jury of the recent prison sentence for a juror who researched the defendant online and told of her research to the rest of the jury. So he's basically working with the idea that newspapers are "ambient" (i.e. you could come across coverage of the story by accident) whereas the internet is off-limits, based on the integrity of the jurors (and the threat of jail, presumably). I'm not sure how TV news coverage comes into this - … Read entire article »

Today the court heard an audio recording made by PC Ackers on Dec 9th 2010, part of a Magnet unit (two police and a photographer) that were present at the protest. Although it was repeatedly stressed that the comments made on the tape were not relevant to the specific prosecution of any of the five defendants, it was argued that the tape gave a picture of the context of the “violent disorder” that is alleged to have taken place that day. The horse charges were described as a “passive push” and various protesters are singled out and identified by their clothing for future reference. Slogans and chants were noted, as well as the movement of the crowd and the instances where police were commanded to get ‘batons out’ and change from … Read entire article »