The Pitcairn Perspectives by Philip Spires - HTML preview

Riots after demo in Hackney by Tanya Reddie

Hackney Post, 14 June 2021

Police sirens sounded throughout Saturday night in Hackney following ongoing clashes between protesters. Disorder also spilled across the border into Stratford and there were reports of trouble from as far away as Bow. No official casualty figures have been released, but our sources indicate that at least twenty people were admitted to local emergency departments, with at least three of the cases being described as ‘serious’.

The trouble arose after a legally organised demonstration turned violent. Organizers of the event have been quoted as blaming the disturbances on members of a counterdemonstration who, they claim, had infiltrated the event with the intention of disrupting it.

A march on behalf of Off Uking Palace (OUP) had been granted official sanction and was planned to take place on Saturday afternoon. Speaking on behalf of the organising committee, former Labour London Assembly Member, Daisy Johnson, said they had promised to observe social distancing and also claimed that they had provided their own stewards in sufficient numbers to supervise the event. OUP is a loose grouping of organisations opposed to the Uking Palace development in Hackney. They claim the development will have a severe environmental impact on the area, will threaten local wildlife and exacerbate local housing shortages. The developers, Uking Terbuka, an Indonesian conglomerate with links to China claim their project has been subjected to all planning rules. The company states further that their own environmental impact assessment finds that their development will have positive effects on the environment.

The march was due to assemble in East Park at 2pm, proceed immediately on a circular route through the borough and return to the park at around 4pm to hear speeches. Because of restrictions imposed by social distancing rules, the march organisers were instructed by police to limit the number of participants to one hundred and fifty. Around 200 people did assemble as planned and, though over the march’s legal limit, they set off on the route. The march proceeded without reported problems for the length of its prescribed route.

By the time the march re-entered East Park, however, there were an estimated 500 people in attendance. It is possible that the increase in attendance came from supporters of the rally who simply did not want to take part in the march but did want to hear the speeches at the end. Alternatively, as the event organizers claim, these new attendees may have been representatives of groups who opposed the march and its goals.

Even out of doors, Covid rules demanded social distancing and, it was clear to everyone, these were not being respected by the crowd. Before any speeches had begun, therefore, police intervened to declare the gathering illegal. The police officers did not attempt to arrest anyone, however, preferring merely to ask those in attendance to disperse and leave the site. The OUP organizers complained that they had permission to conduct a public meeting and announced to officers that they intended to continue with their speeches. The police rejected their request and continued to ask those assembled to disperse.

It was at this point that the OUP organizers took matters into their own hands and announced from the podium that the crowd should not comply with the police instructions, that they should stay put and wait for the planned proceedings to continue. The police response was to enter the podium itself and attempt to detain the organisers who, by their defiance of the instruction to disperse, were deemed to be acting illegally. Via the event’s public address system, one of the organisers, Elsie Pitcairn, accompanied by a male colleague, who was not introduced by name to those assembled and appeared to be directing proceedings, encouraged OUP supporters to resist the calls to move on. This prompted the crowd to initiate abusive chants against the police.

It was at this point that reports of what happened start to differ. OUP supporters claim that the chanting and abuse came from that portion of the march that had joined at the end, comprising, they claim, members of groups opposed to OUP’s goals. OUP supporters claim that the march had been infiltrated not only by those opposed to the Uking Palace development, but also by white supremacist groups and others representing different political groups who attended merely to disrupt. It was these latter, unnamed and unidentified groups whom the organisers of the march blamed for the outbreak of violence, when fights began to break out amongst the crowd at approximately 4:45pm.

During the following twenty minutes, there occurred what one of the police officers attending described as ‘mayhem’. Groups of people fought and chased one another across the park. Before 5:30pm, some of these disorderly groups had spilled out into nearby streets. Shop windows were smashed, a number of houses belonging to innocent people who were not themselves involved in the march in any way were attacked with stones. Before 6:30pm, two cars had been overturned, one of which was set on fire.

The police were criticized by local residents for their slow response. “For an hour it seemed that they just let the mob do as they wished,” claimed one resident, whose front windows had been smashed. The police later issued a statement in which they claimed that their presence at the march was proportional and had been agreed with the OUP organisers at a level that would not be perceived as provocative or threatening. When violence flared, police commanders did not have sufficient resources nearby to effect an immediate response. The delay perceived by residents was merely a reflection of the time needed to move reinforcements into the area.

The officer in charge stated that in his opinion the violence had been caused by people who were attending the demonstration. When asked to comment on the identity of those involved, specifically whether there might be infiltrators, he said that, as far as the police were concerned, they were required by law to ask the demonstration to disperse, and that violence had broken out as a result of the crowd’s reluctance to comply with instructions. He said they had been faced with an unruly mob, with problems arising out of the mass of people attending the event and not from any specific or identifiable groups. The officer pointed out that it was not the job of the police to identify the political associations of individuals. As far as the authorities were concerned, they had been presented with a body of people apparently all attending the same function, a function which, by then, was illegal, because it had exceeded the number of participants for which permission had been granted. The march organisers, said that same senior officer at the scene, were encouraging defiance. When violence flared, the police had to deal with it accordingly and appropriately, so they might bring an end to the disturbance, whoever might have caused it and for whatever reason.

By 6pm the general lawlessness and violence had spread in three directions, west, south and east. The main problems were experienced in Hackney, but there were reports of antisocial behaviour from Stratford shopping centre and as far away as Bow. In Hackney town centre, two shops were looted. An off licence was ransacked and a sports shop had items stolen from its window display. Stratford shopping centre declared an emergency and security staff were deployed. Alarms sounded, but almost immediately, according to eyewitnesses, the perpetrators dispersed, obviously aware that they might be locked in the building behind the automatic doors and then detained. Shoppers described how a number of young males with their faces obscured by masks, scarves and balaclavas had ‘steamed’ through the shopping centre. Several elderly people describe being knocked to the ground as the group pushed people indiscriminately. The disturbance lasted for barely five minutes before alarms sounded and the perpetrators fled.

The violence in Hackney continued sporadically thought the night. Local residents describe a sleepless night as police sirens sounded. Reports of unrest came in from several streets on both sides of Mare Street, which itself stayed relatively calm after the initial shop looting. Police have recorded ten separate incidents, but no arrests were made since the perpetrators again fled as soon as alarms were sounded. There are unconfirmed reports that a man was stabbed soon after dawn.

As we go to press, the story is still developing. The violence has died down, but now the inquest into exactly how and why the situation developed must begin. After a scuffle on the podium in East Park, police moved in and detained the event’s organiser, Elsie Pitcairn, 26, of Highbury, an employee of Xenon Media. She is charged with resisting arrest.