[g8-sheffield] demo - bad news

[Jillian Creasy]

The police have told me today that they will not allow any kind of march in the city centre during the afternoon/evenings of the G8 visit. In fact they won't allow any sort of gathering at all - they are using "delegated powers" to stop groups of two or more people. I tried to ask where the general public would be allowed to move normally and couldn't get a straight answer. They would be happy for us to demonstrate on Devonshire Green. I said this was not an option, we wanted to have a presence in the city centre and to be able to march, we didn't see the point of being coralled on Devonshire Green, surrounded by police. He - Gary - said Devonshire Green was a traditional place for demos and there would be people around. 

John is rewriting the letter emphasising that this is an unacceptable infringement of our right to demonstrate. We can then get is signed by as many people as possible, including any big names we can think of and send to the press, the police, the Council, whatever. I am trying to find out exactly what laws are being invoked.

Not sure how the SAG8 group will respond in terms of doing something else/different/more so on the afternoon/evening of the 15th ... as far as I'm concerned, I was only interested in helping set up a peaceful, well disciplined march and will not get involved in alternatives on the street - am going to concentrate on getting maximum publicity for this turn of events and on the other things - march on the 11th, Peace in the Park, demo outside and questions inside the council meeting ...

Will be interested to hear what you all think.


Jillian
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