I was reporting last week on the Climate Camp at Heathrow airport, writes Tristan Farrow. After a week of communal eco-living, democratic decision-making, and two days of protests targeting the BAA (British Airports Authority) and energy companies, let's take stock of what the demonstration achieved.
The police may congratulate themselves for 'successfully' containing protesters, but I think I could have done a better job just with some sheep dogs.
The Guardian's environment editor and I were stopped and searched walking through a field because "we don't know that you haven't just come from the protesters' camp", said the officer in charge of the police line guarding one access route to the BAA site. Press cards are suspect too.
Two days earlier, I was stopped and quizzed at the nearby Hatton Cross underground station after interviewing a woman who was searched when she asked policemen for directions to the climate camp.
When there is a threat of violence, most would agree to trade-in the privacy of their bags and pockets for the safety from knives and sticks. Football fans accepted that equation long ago. The line that police tread is a fine one, but last weekend they leapt right over it. Friendly bobby community policing this wasn't.
An unsettling precedent police set was the routine use of section 44 of the Terrorism Act to stop and search protesters. This says that police can search and detain people without any evidence of involvement in terrorist activity. But when does protecting the public turn into haranguing, and haranguing into harassing? With the camp at 1km from the airport and with the highest per capita population of vegetarians, it seems a hard case to make that the camp tents were harbouring terrorists. And none of the rioters of G8 fame that 'intelligence' promised us showed up.
Last Sunday, police had no difficulty encircling and herding any group of protesters that gathered near the BAA offices. A few tried tried to break out but were quickly clobbered back by truncheons and punches from perspex police shields.
In one incident, 20 officers in riot gear "subdued" two rag-clad protestors who were already lying prostrate on the forecourt. Truncheons soon came out and one of the protesters began bleeding as his leg was cut open.
The riot police ringed the empty BAA building, while a wider cordon of police surrounded the grounds, coralling hundreds of protesters in the car park.
One angry British Airways stewardess said that the police were "behaving as if they have al-Qaida in there". A legal observer was told by police to join the protesters and thrown head-first into the fray when she refused.
Compare the behaviour of the Heathrow protestors with something like the Leeds music festival, a venue infamous for turning ugly. One festival-goer described an event in 2005:
"People were throwing alcohol onto fires, tents were ablaze. It went on through the night and police were having a hard time controlling it. There, police don't have horses and certainly no riot gear. But at events like the climate camp where people don't really want to hurt others and have a worthy cause, the police are armed like they are terrorists."
Which makes me wonder: what should policing priorities be? Heavy-handed treatment of peaceful protesters in front of an empty building, or events known for loutish behaviour where police are out of their depth?
