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Socialist Review, April 1995

Claire Dissington

Welling trials

Candid cameras

 

From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

The police cover up of their attack on the Welling march against the BNP in 1993 has been blown apart during a series of recent court cases. There have been over 20 trials of demonstrators so far, all of which have resulted in verdicts of not guilty. During these trials the police lies about their actions have been exposed by video evidence and the release of a startling internal police document which admits that the police tactic of turning and facing the demonstration led to protesters being boxed in.

The document goes further to criticise the absence of loudspeaker equipment to direct demonstrators. Video evidence in court has shown that the police had mounted a huge PA system at this point but didn’t use it. The document also reveals that the recommended tactic for officers on the day was to defuse trouble by withdrawing through set police escape routes. This was also ignored, with the police choosing instead to batter the demonstrators. A senior public order officer claimed he was unaware of these orders and advised his officers that the use of truncheons was up to the individual officer’s discretion.

The trials so far have been a farce. The police have tried to refute the internal document, still insisting that the route was never blocked in spite of the video evidence to the contrary and the police’s own admission in the briefing. One prosecution barrister was overheard to comment that the police went mad and ‘biffed’ everyone in sight.

Juries have been shocked by the scenes of relentless police attacks on crowds of innocent demonstrators and scenes of people being hit repeatedly by truncheons, edges of riot shields and the fists of police officers. The 74 people the London ambulance service took to hospital on the day were in fact demonstrators.

The video evidence the police have compiled shows that the police staged the demonstration for confrontation. One quarter of the entire London police force – 7,000 officers – were in Welling that day to police a demonstration that they claim had only 15,000 people on it, at a cost of over £750,000.

Police cameras were in every road, every house, on roofs and in helicopters. But the police had not bargained for the fact that the video evidence shows every aspect of police violence and so has rebounded on them.

This is despite headlines last year which screamed, ‘Can you name these professional rioters?’ ‘Riot savages,’ ‘Help to nail leaders of terror rampage,’ and ‘Name that loon,’ and the fact that detectives working on the cases secured a court order to seize 50 hours of video footage and 1,250 pictures from the press. The 27 pictures they issued to the national press were of 80 demonstrators police wanted to charge with riot – a charge carrying a possible sentence of 10 to 12 years in prison.

Teams of detectives then proceeded to travel to every police force in Britain and display the photographs at every police station. The media responded by offering rewards for people turned in on a special hotline which even made it onto television’s Crime Monthly.

Yet when jurors have been shown video evidence of the defendants’ actions on the day, the alleged stick or brick throwing pales into insignificance when the defence rewinds the tapes and shows that before this the demonstrator has been brutally beaten by the police.

A senior officer claimed under oath that no officers attacked demonstrators. When shown video footage of an inspector punching a demonstrator and another officer hitting a bystander in the face three times with the edge of a shield he said he could not see it on the screen. Faced with police officers who are prepared to lie so blatantly to the judge and jury, it is not surprising that juries are returning verdicts of not guilty based on self defence.

The police have yet to secure a conviction but this is precisely what they intend to do in the show trials in Maidstone this summer when the final cases will he heard. The chance of a fair trial has been greatly reduced by the photos splashed over the pages of the tabloids calling the demonstrators thugs. Yet there is hope that the jurors will have seen that from Orgreave to Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park and to Shoreham and Brighton the role of the police is to criminalise and brutally attack working class people who want to fight back.

It is unlawful for the police to use truncheons on demonstrators. In view of this, will the Sun – which offered a reward of £1,000 for names of those who ‘turned a peaceful protest march into a bloody riot’ – be issuing pictures of the police involved?


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