I went to observe, not join, the protest in Piccadilly Gardens today, to see what happened. It was the strangest protest I've seen.
No speaker or organisation. Most of the time the protest was silent. About 50 Robinson fans, 1 union flag, 1 England flag, a few chants of, "Oh, Tommy, Tommy", a few chants of what sounded like "Starmer is a paedo", and "We want Starmer out". The main chant was, "Save our kids! Save our kids!"
There seemed to be more police in riot gear than protestors. I counted 7 police vans, a TAU van, and 3 police cars. A drone was about 30m above the protest watching everything.
It was peaceful and not threatening until the police horses arrived. They evetually kettled some protestors into a narrow gap between a building and some barricades. There was no where for them to go, so they pushed some of the barricades over to escape being crushed by the horses, which totally terrified some children nearby who screamed in fear. Most nearby ran for safety. I didn't see any casualties, which was lucky.
One good thing is there wasn't an Israel flag there.
This photo from The Daily Mail shows what I mean about the barricades. The horses are just out of the picture to the left. They were driving the protestors to the right through that narrow gap. Very dangerous. Luckily nobody wws injured, but this terrified the children nearby.
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