Met Police lied to us, say arrested Coronation protesters
Republican protesters arrested ahead of the King’s Coronation have accused the Metropolitan Police of “repeatedly lying” about allowing the group to hold a peaceful demonstration.
Graham Smith, chief executive of the anti-monarchist group Republic, said they had spent four months holding meetings with the police to agree plans for a protest in Trafalgar Square.
But he and other members of the group were among 64 people arrested ahead of the Coronation for a range of alleged offences including going equipped to lock on and conspiracy to cause public nuisance.
Mr Smith accused the Met of “lying” to Republic and said it was clear the force never had any intention of allowing a peaceful protest to take place.
Explaining what the group had been planning for the Coronation, Mr Smith told Radio 4’s Today Programme: “We intended to be in large numbers in Trafalgar Square near the procession route, as well as having smaller groups along the procession route.
“We were very clear with the Metropolitan Police about that over the last four months and they repeatedly said, right up until Friday, that they had no concerns about our protest plans.
“They were well aware of what we were going to do and that they would engage with us and not disrupt what we were going to do, so they have repeatedly lied about their intentions and I believe they had every intention of arresting us prior to doing so.”
Mr Smith said he and his fellow protesters had been held for 16 hours before being released.
He went on: “They also said they had intelligence which was untrue if they did have intelligence their intelligence officers were either lying or incompetent.”
Mr Smith added: “They stopped us because the law was introduced, rushed in last week, to give them the powers to stop us on any flimsy pretext.
“That law means we no longer in this country have the right to protest, we only have the freedom to protest contingent on the permission of senior police officers and politicians and it's my view that those senior police officers were under immense pressure from politicians.”
There were also suggestions on social media that the Met may have used information gathered during meetings with the protest groups to pre-emptively arrest them, with one commentator suggesting if that were the case it represented “desperately grave times ahead for event safety planning”.
But Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist, denied that was the case insisting “that did not happen”.
The Met’s handling of protesters on the day of the Coronation is likely to come in for further scrutiny by the London Assembly’s Policing and Crime Committee.
Concern has been raised over the apparent arrest of three members of Westminster city council’s Night Stars safety team, which offers advice to women on night’s out and hands out rape alarms as part of their work.
The Green Party’s Caroline Russell, who chairs the Police and Crime Committee, said: “I think it's really worrying that these arrests have happened.
“It felt like for someone who was trying to protest, and trying to do it by the book, it was very difficult to understand what the rules were.
“It seems absolutely extraordinary that those people who were volunteering, they were out there handing out flip flops to people who could no longer walk in their high heels because they'd had a bit too much to drink and handing out rape alarms. It just seems extraordinary that they got caught up in the Met's safety net. How? It just feels very odd.
“The Police and Crime Committee, we question the mayor, Mopac (Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime) and the Metropolitan Police, we meet every fortnight, so of course we will be questioning this because I'm sure members of all parties will want to have their questions answered.”
Sadiq Khan has asked for “urgent clarity” from the Met police over its handling of the arrests.
But Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, has insisted the police got the correct balance between allowing protests and preventing disruption to the Coronation.
