[g8-sheffield] Report from derby

[Elanor Baylis]

hello, 
sorry that this has taken a while, but this is my thought on the derby
demo. There are a few things i feel we could have done to improve
things.

Derby on Thursday
The venue was 4-5 miles away from the city centre and heavily guarded,
the only people i knew who headed up there were promptly searched by
bored police.

The meeting for the critical mass at the police station was, as
expected, met by many times more police than demonstrators. They said
that the critical mass could go ahead but that they would arrest any
foot followers for breach of section 14. Section 14 notices were up
all over town, though the police did not try to give out writen
warnings to individuals - some of the protest organisers had done
this. Alongside maps of the city centre and the area where the
conference was held. Obviously having this warning on people meant
that if they were arrested they couldn't claim that they didn't know
they were not allowed to be away from the market place. So it makes
sense for us to hand out legal warnings and maps on different pages,
suggesting people don't hang on to legal warnings.
The police arrested critical mass cyclists after they stopped
following the route the police wanted them to, they didn't arrest them
all at once, but they did push a women off her bike, so most were
arrested then. They were taken to the station and released between
9.30 and 11.10 at night. Charged with breach of section 14 and some
suggested obstruction of the public highway, their bikes were
empounded.
the protest at the centre was small, about 200, totally over
policed.Some street theatre went on, some football, we really need to
try and get more people than this, and make sure that banner displays
etc are high enough that the police can't surround them and prevent
the public viewing them.
No-one appeared to have any leaflets for the public at any point.
There were no obvious legal observers or first aiders, though there
was a legal contact number.
The police had greated the expected panic in the city, meaning that
the venue for the evenings chill out, had to be changed last minute as
the police scared off the owners of the original venue.
I wasn't aware of anyone having been assigned to take photos for indymedia.

hope this helps fill the gap with people's understand of what went on,
if you weren't there.
anne