Premeditated provocation; that is the only way to describe the police riot in Hyde Park on Sunday 11 Aug ust, during which a number of demonstrators were arrested for the "crime' of wearing black berets.
The demonstration marked the third anniversary of internment in the North of Ireland, and was one of scores of Irish marches in London during which black berets have been worn.
Most of the arrests came after the police tried to push back the front line of the demonstration thereby converting a relatively orderly march into a series of scuffles. A young girl was grabbed by police after she snatched the beret from the head of a man being led away, and a 63-year-old woman wis also arrested when she picked up a beret from the ground Most of those arrested were released on bail in the carly evening: about seven were charged with wearing an illegal uniform, and one or two others with the classical assilting a policeman'. But more trouble broke out when relatives and friends of those arrested went to the Police Station to find out what had happened.
The driver of a van carrying Sinn Fein banners and flags was pounced on by police after he had parked outside the Police Station. His shirt was torn off as they dragged him inside. This provoked another angry scene after which several women and young girls were arrested and charged with Pole assaule The 'white backlash' at Imperial Typewriters, Leicester, appears to be subsiding in spite of attempts by the NF to hot it up. Some NF stickers One of the arrested men wus informed by a policeman that in the briefing before the march, the police were told that about twenty of the demonstrators were to be arrested. because the top brass were Nick of the Irish and their bloody marches!
This police provocation in London Collows the events in Birmingham where Irish prisoners are being held on bombing charges. The Irish Politic: al Hostages Committee has released details of maltreatment suffered by them.
One man had sixteen cigarette burns on his body. The police claimed secretary, who consistently attacked the ly racialist serms, was a foundor member of the East Midlands conciliation committee of the Race Relations Board. Thie that he had burned himself, but he does not smoke, Three men were suspended from high windows, and others had empty revolvers held to their heads, and the triggers pulled The British labour movement must be roused to the significanoe: of these events. They form part of a consistent pattern of anti-Irish provocation. The same police who took no action against black shirted fascists carrying National Front banners in Red Lion Square, cannot tolerate an old-age pensioner with a beret in her hand. Who is next? Palice move in, "converting a relatively orderly march into a series of scuffles' wutkers to stand up to the blacks, sinice, Workers Movement.
CELALA From page 1 with Fitzsinmons