{"id":821,"date":"2021-04-26T13:23:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T12:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/?p=821"},"modified":"2021-04-26T13:34:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T12:34:14","slug":"the-right-to-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/2021\/04\/26\/the-right-to-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right to Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(April 26th 2021) On a slightly more positive note than many of my posts this past weekend saw a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people (some say a million) in London, against the lockdowns and restrictions.  This went without much police supervision or interference.  There was very little violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sadly towards the end there were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2021\/04\/25\/police-condemn-violent-anti-lockdown-thugs-eight-officers-injured\/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1399449&amp;WT.tsrc=email&amp;etype=Edi_FAM_New_ES_Subs&amp;utmsource=email&amp;utm_medium=Edi_FAM_New_ES_Subs20210426&amp;utm_campaign=DM1399449\">scuffles in Hyde Park <\/a>and bottles were thrown at Police who were intentionally not wearing riot gear. However, and I am increasingly emphasising this, the trouble makers were few and it seems just out for the fight with the Police.  At any demo these days there are the such <strong>a wide spectrum of positions<\/strong> represented and always <strong>an element who just want to kick off<\/strong> against the establishment, almost irrespective of the core issue of the demonstration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One does wonder what the Police hoped to achieve by wading into sucha large crowd with so few officers and it turned nasty quite quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hyde Park Violence: Clashes erupt between anti-lockdown protesters and police in London\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b5-ywpbj-MY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sadly the Police are damned if they do and damned if they don&#8217;t.  I fear that we are heading towards more and more <strong>heavy handed policing <\/strong>to repress potential riots &#8211; and one can&#8217;t blame them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"640\" src=\"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/04\/TELEMMGLPICT000256874556_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08-1024x640.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-822\" srcset=\"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/04\/TELEMMGLPICT000256874556_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08-1024x640.jpeg 1024w, http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/04\/TELEMMGLPICT000256874556_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08-300x188.jpeg 300w, http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/04\/TELEMMGLPICT000256874556_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08-768x480.jpeg 768w, http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/04\/TELEMMGLPICT000256874556_1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQfyf2A9a6I9YchsjMeADBa08.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The demo does seem to have been mainly peaceful but such a mix of people and purpose, perhaps more an excuse for a party than anything else!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T7Jg6koGE-g\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(April 26th 2021) On a slightly more positive note than many of my posts this past weekend saw a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people (some say a million) in London, against the lockdowns and restrictions. This went without much police supervision or interference. There was very little violence. Sadly towards the end there &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/2021\/04\/26\/the-right-to-protest\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Right to Protest&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crosstownservices.co.uk\/malcolminthemiddle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}