Anti-Bush demo - STWC letter of protest

Jacqui Smith, Secretary of State
Home Office, 3rd Floor, Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London, SW1P 4DF

Dear Home Secretary

We are writing to protest in the strongest possible terms concerning the conduct of the Metropolitan Police at yesterday's demonstration organised by the Stop the War Coalition, CND and the British Muslim Initiative.

In particular, we wish to raise two decisions with you. First, the decision to ban the march from proceeding peacefully up Whitehall after rallying in Parliament Square. There can be no justification for this arbitrary abridgement of our right to peacefully protest. As you may know, the Stop the War Coalition has organised over twenty major demonstrations in the last seven years, nearly all of them in London. There has been no disorder, let alone violence, at any of them. The idea that we could have presented any physical threat to the President of the United States is laughable. This decision smacks of a growing authoritarian clamp-down on the right to demonstrate, bearing in mind that the Metropolitan Police also tried to prohibit our march in Whitehall last October, and is indicative of your government's increasingly cavalier (to put it gently) attitude towards civil liberties. It further contradicts the Prime Minister's stated intention, on his accession to office last summer, to take a more liberal approach to protest around Parliament and the seat of government.

Second, we ask you to address urgently the violent policing of the demonstration itself. This arises, of course, from the undemocratic nature of the decision to ban our march. However, there could under no circumstances be any justification for the repeated and uncontrolled assault on peaceful demonstrators who at most were doing no more than attempting to proceed up Whitehall and in many cases were actually endeavouring to comply with police instructions. A large number of our supporters, none of whom, of course, were in any way prepared for any sort of physical confrontation, sustained injuries from baton-wielding police officers and others were arbitrarily arrested. We refer you, inter alia, to the attached letter from George Galloway MP to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police which details some of the gross and unjustified brutality which accompanied much of the policing operation.

We hold that this conduct is entirely unacceptable in a democratic country. The determination of the police to ensure that our voices cannot be heard in Whitehall on an issue of urgent public controversy, at the apparent behest of the US President, presents a bleak picture of the government's priorities.

We are therefore seeking an urgent meeting with you to discuss this issue. You will understand that there can be no question of any further co-operation between the Stop the War Coalition and the Metropolitan Police in regard to future protests until these concerns are addressed to our satisfaction.

Yours
Andrew Murray
Lindsey German