The arrests of anti-monarchy protesters during the coronation was a premeditated attempt to “disrupt and diminish” their republican demonstration, a leading activist has said.
Graham Smith, the head of the group Republic, said the Metropolitan police’s decision to break up Saturday’s planned protest before it began trampled over their rights, adding the group had been in conversation with Scotland Yard for months beforehand.
It came as City Hall politicians joined the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, in seeking answers from Scotland Yard over the detention of Republic protesters and volunteers working for the local council to keep people safe.
Smith told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We have had four months of close conversation with the Metropolitan police, in which we have explained to them exactly what we’re going to do, where we’re going to be. We told them how many placards we had, what they would say, that we would have flags, that we would have amplification equipment.
“The amplification equipment was then seized and my colleagues were told they’d be arrested if they used megaphones. The whole thing was a deliberate attempt to disrupt and diminish our protest.”
Asked if he thought his arrest before the event was premeditated, Smith said: “Absolutely. I have no doubt about that at all, simply because there was nothing that we did do that could possibly justify even being detained and arrested and held.”
He said his organisation had engaged with the police throughout the planning of its demonstration, with officers saying until the day before that they had no concerns.
“They were well aware of what we were going to do and [said] they would engage with us and not disrupt us. So they have repeatedly lied about their intentions. And I believe that they had every intention of arresting us prior to doing so,” he said.
The Met said it arrested 64 people on Saturday, including members of Westminster city council’s women’s safety campaign Night Stars, who hand out rape alarms and other items. Police claimed intelligence had indicated people were planning to use rape alarms to disrupt the coronation procession.
Scotland Yard faces scrutiny over its handling of the event, with the Green politician Caroline Russell, who chairs the London assembly’s police and crime committee, calling it “really worrying”.
She told Today: “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.”
Ken Marsh, the chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said police acted “without fear or favour” and had to act within the context they found on the ground.
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He said: “Protesting can take place in this country. But it’s the level to which you want to perform that protesting that we have to balance.”
He dismissed concerns about heavy-handed policing as “pontificating”, insisting that police had done an “incredible job” on a day when the world’s eyes were on the UK. “Not one incident took place. And this went off around the world without any need to worry about what happened that day.”
Marsh did not address the potential for reputational damage to the country by steps taken to prevent the demonstrators exercising what they characterise as their right to freedom of expression.
The mayor of London said on Sunday: “Some of the arrests made by police as part of the coronation event raise questions and, while investigations are ongoing, I’ve sought urgent clarity from Met leaders on the action taken.”
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