Protesters Say the Met Banned a Guy from Going to Tomorrow's Big London Anti-Austerity Demonstration

As London gears up for a big anti-austerity demonstration on Saturday, the police have been making preparations of their own. By the looks of things, those preparations include trying to dissuade activists that they deem to be troublemakers from showing up.

On Wednesday, political groups the London Black Revs and Brick Lane debates claimed that an activist was arrested and held in a cell for three hours, while another was called in for questioning. The arrestee was given bail conditions that specifically tell him not to turn up to the demo. The other says he was intimidated in relation to the protest tomorrow.

The Met police confirmed an arrest for violent disorder connected to the "Fuck the Tories" protest on the 9th of May, and the bail conditions which include; "Not to attend the Anti Austerity Demo in Central London on Saturday 20th June 2015."

Kevin Blowe from the Network of Police Monitoring – Netpol – warned of the possibility of further politicised arrests to come, saying, "I suspect we'll hear much more, much closer and certainly on Saturday morning."

Speaking to me on the condition of anonymity, the arrested activist told me he thinks his arrest was, "a political response by the police that seeks to intimidate various activists. It's happened days before what will be the biggest protest this year, so it's an attempt to derail what they consider to be leading activists, to intimidate them, demobilise them. These attempts won't work. In fact, they achieve the opposite."

Another activist was called in for questioning and, he says, was intimidated. Again speaking on the condition of anonymity, he told me, "T here's the feeling of being scared and it being very strange that you can all of a sudden be door-knocked late in the morning and then be called by Scotland Yard on your personal mobile phone. If they had anything, they would have just straight-up arrested me.

"It is intimidation, because it's trying to repel you from doing what you're doing, which is honest, open activism and organising on social issues, issues of liberation which they find a threat. I feel like my life is kind of suspended. You feel instantly wronged, which is what they want. I think the timing is completely in sync with the demonstration. I don't really understand why they're so scared about it."

While Wednesday's arrest was in relation to a previous demonstration and the investigation is ongoing, people are questioning the timing of it just before tomorrow's demo.

If this is part of a deliberate tactic of stopping trouble-makers from demonstrating, it would be nothing new. To take just one example, before the Royal Wedding in 2012, a number of activists were "pre-arrested" to stifle even the possibility of any anti-monarchy dissent. One person got arrested for wearing fancy dress – or for "a fictional breach of the peace", as the arrestee described it.

On that occasion, a judicial review of the police's actions ruled that they did nothing wrong. This was in part based on the "evidence" of a hysterically overblown piece of scare-mongering in the Sun newspaper. The article claimed that "extremists plan to wreak havoc around Westminster Abbey for a MONTH before the big day and aim to ambush royal cars with roadblocks, diversions and smoke bombs". This was obviously absurd, but the Met's barrister wasn't above bringing this bollocks up in court.

This time around, hysteria in the tabloid press has been used to back up the police's actions again. A statement from LBR and Brick Lane Debates pointed out that during interviews of their activists, police officers had mentioned an article in the Mail on Sunday, which was published last week. The article was an "undercover expose" where a reporter sleuthed his way into an open public meeting. The paper told a story of "far-left activists p lotting to bring anarchy and violence to the streets of Britain by hijacking peaceful anti-austerity marches".

Katya Nasim and Arnie Hill, two of the activists singled out in the piece, have claimed that the newspaper was "desperate for fantasy narratives of violent underground cells". The arrested activist told me, " It's no coincidence that days after that Mail piece comes out, two activists have encounters with the police."

The London Campaign Against Police and State Violence (LCAPST) said that, "Police bail is routinely abused by the Metropolitan Police to restrict legitimate protest on the spurious allegations of ' violent disorder'. Last year at the Westfield 'die-in' that we organised with London Black Revs, NUS Black Students Campaign and Defend the Right to Protest, 76 people – including children under 16 – were arrested, and many were given restrictive bail conditions. None of the arrestees were charged, but they were under police bail for over four months. Some up to six months."

Kevin Blowe from Netpol called for an end to bail conditions being used against activists. " Frankly, the police can't be trusted not to use this to interfere with people's rights to freedom of expression, and they shouldn't be used in pre-charge bail conditions for political activism, at all," he said. "Because, in the experience of too many people, it's been used in a vindictive manner."

If the police are indeed trying to stop key activists attending the demo, it's likely that they would nick people tonight and tomorrow morning, because they can hold people for 24 hours without charge. That means they can haul activists in for totally spurious reasons, keep them in a cell until the demonstration blows over and then release them before the time limit is up and they have to come up with a real reason for the arrest.

The Met have said that their policing plan is "appropriate and proportional". But when the police consider it appropriate to arrest housing activist Lisa Mackenzie for allegedly putting a sticker on the window of a poor door, I guess a fair few political activists are going to be sleeping uneasily tonight.

This article has been updated to reflect that the police confirmed the arrest.

@SimonChilds13

More like this:

A Checklist of Everything that Will Probably Happen at Tomorrow's Big Anti-Austerity Protest in London

The Labour Party Is Dead and Jeremy Corbyn Won't Bring it Back to Life

I Watched Anti-Austerity Activists Start a Squat in a London Pub