I haven’t read the whole thread, but I was there last night from around 5pm
By 5pm, the police helicopter had already been hovering overhead for about an hour.
The route I walked was about 0.3mile and there were probably about 12 police, in pairs, just quietly standing off the paths, chatting to each other but ignoring the people walking towards the bandstand.
At the bandstand, 95% of people were wearing masks, keeping their distance. Most were walking to the front and placing a flower or note and then pulling back.
As the sun set, someone starting playing a drum and there was some sort of speech. I didn’t hear much of it, but I did hear someone say ‘we were going to try and get a sound system here but were told it wouldn’t be a good idea so we are going to have to shout instead’
There were chants of ‘who’s streets, our streets’ and ‘sisters united, together forever’
There was a minutes silence and then what seemed to be someone reading out the names of other women killed.
There was a bit of a split between people moving forward to hear what was being said on the bandstand. Most stood where they were listening and occasionally joining in with with ‘who’s streets our streets’ chants
Sometime around 9, it became obvious there were a lot more police around. They had been steadily ringing the wider group until they had us surrounded
Then out of nowhere, and certainly not promoted by anything said or done by the protesters, they began forcing everyone forward, while shouting ‘move back’ or ‘move away from the area’. Pretty much everyone was saying ‘how can I move back when you were pushing us forward’
They just kept shouting, which was obviously enormously frustrating.
This is probably when they ‘shouldn’t you be getting your own house in order’, ‘arrest your own, not us’ comments started, which escalated into the ‘fuck the police’ chants
The police were still pushing everyone into a tighter and tighter group and then pushed through the crowd to get themselves right to the front on the bottom of and into the bandstand. It was probably 5 mins from start to finish? Maybe longer?
At this point, I had managed to move out the back, because I was already on the edge when they started pushing forward. But anyone further forward wouldn’t have stood a chance getting out.
Whatever male groups started vandalising police vans were over by the Windmill pub. It’s obvious from the video footage they aren’t by the bandstand so it’s ridiculous to suggest the police had to treat it as one incident
Look up the windmill and the bandstand on Google maps...
I didn’t see or hear any anti police chants until the police got heavy handed. I didn’t hear much at all from the bandstand because they didn’t have a sound system.
As someone said on a thread last night, if the Met had sent 20 female officers to stand quietly to keep an eye and look sympathetic, the whole thing would have been done and dusted by 10pm
Instead, they threw a hand grenade into a cross but controlled situation.