A-Infos Media - London - OBSERVER: Armed police on May Day riot alert

[dr woooo <vornman@excite.com>]

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>  To: m1-2k01@yahoogroups.com  From: Joseph Mahon <joseph.mahon@st-hughs.oxford.ac.uk>

>  Martin Bright and Frank Kane
>  Sunday April 22, 2001
>  The Observer 
>  
>  Specialist firearms teams are being drafted in to police this year's May
Day demonstrations in the City of London over fears that rioters armed with
samurai swords and machetes will infiltrate the protests. 
>  The teams will be ready to isolate anyone carrying these weapons from the
thousands of other demonstrators expected. A senior officer involved in the
operation said: 'If somebody used a samurai sword or a firearm we would want
to put some space between them and the crowd.' 
>  
>  Armed response vehicles would not be appropriate in packed streets, he
explained, so small groups of weapons specialists would operate across the
City, available to commanders on the ground at a moment's notice. 
>  
>  The concern in London was heightened this weekend by reports from Quebec
City in Canada, where police arrested six anti-capitalist demonstrators with
a cache of smoke bombs and stolen military training equipment. Violence
erupted at the Summit of the Americas in the Quebec capital, as
anti-capitalists demonstrated against moves to spread free trade. 
>  
>  The seized arsenal included four smoke bombs and three devices known as
'thunderflashes', used to simulate grenade explosions in military exercises.
The police also found chains, baseball bats, bags of steel balls, catapults
and gas masks. 
>  
>  The London demonstration on Tuesday week has been dubbed May Day Monopoly
after the property board game. The organisers have identified dozens of
targets involving the game's famous streets. It is thought the activity will
culminate with a 'sale of the century' protest in Oxford Street, seen as a
centre of consumer capitalism with its stores and branches of multinational
chains. 
>  
>  Although London's financial district is not included on the Monopoly
board, City police sources said previous experience of anti-capitalist
demonstrations showed that targets identified in advance by the organisers
often turned out to be decoys. Dozens of businesses were identified for
action before the 'J18' demonstration in June 1999, for example, but few
were actually involved. 
>  
>  Perry Nove, the City of London Commissioner, said bogus lists of targets
were designed to stretch police resources, and the Square Mile was, in the
protesters' jargon, 'target-rich'. 
>  
>  'They are heavily into disinformation,' Nove added. 'Therefore it could
be a smokescreen, with no single focus of attack.' Signs of a split on
strategy between his force and the Metropolitan Police, which is leading the
operation, have appeared just over a week before the event. Officers in the
City force are known to be uncomfortable with comments by the Met's
Assistant Commissioner Mike Todd, who said he would operate a 'zero
tolerance' crime policy on May Day. Todd's City colleagues, however, believe
this policy is 'conceptually flawed' as it constrains officers from using
their own initiative. 
>  
>  Activists accused the police of demonising genuine protesters by
concentrating on a violent core. Jim Carey of the direct action magazine
Squall said: 'Attempts to reduce anti-capitalism to a menacing monoculture
of violence are so wide of the mark as to suggest they are being
strategically divisive. 
>  
>  'There is nothing the police or Home Office can say to change the fact
that anti-capitalist activists hail from all walks of life, religions and
social backgrounds.' 
>  
>  Divisions have emerged among the protesters, too. Peter Cadogan, who
helped organise the 1968 anti-Vietnam war protest in London, criticised the
'Wombles' - the self-styled leaders of May Day Monopoly, who plan to wear
padded boiler suits to protect them from police batons. 
>  
>  'The enemy is not the police,' he said. 'If we misidentify the enemy we
shall be the agents of our own defeat.' 
>  
>  He broke with the organisers when they refused to identify any aims
beyond anti-capitalism, and they in turn have called him a 'splitter'. 
>  
>  Cadogan said this weekend: 'The leadership want sheep-like solidarity,
and they are condemning anyone who doesn't fall into line.' 
>  
>  ( from http://www.observer.co.uk ) 
>  
>  -- 
>  Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity.


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