Welshpool Anti BNP Protest 11th Aug 2001






Welshpool Anti BNP Protest 11th Aug 2001
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The BNP (British National Party) are an extreme right wing group including many members with convictions for racial incitement and assault. They opted to hold a \"family festival\" in rural Wales near the town of Welshpool over the weekend of 11th/12th August and many people from around Wales and the UK traveled to the area to protest and hopefully prevent BNP members from getting to the rally. This is one protestor\'s day out.


We left from South Wales in the damp dawn at 5.45am, 40 of us had hired a coach and raised the money by subscription and appealing to sympathisers. We headed north and looped around the BNP site so as to arrive from the North and hopefully avoid Police roadblocks. We did not succeed.



As we approached the village of Lanerfyl we were stopped by Police on the main road and ushered into a schoolyard. The Police boarded the coach and informed us that under sections of the Public Order Act and the Criminal Justice Act we would not be allowed to proceed, furthermore we would be detained and searched. This we were told was in order to \"prevent disorder\". Several passengers complained that we were not offered copies of the orders being used, and the Inspector read them out, we were than taken from the bus one at a time and searched.

Not only did the Police search for weapons, their stated objective, they also looked for drugs and even had a sniffer dog on site for this. One member of our party was then arrested for possession of Cannabis.

The searches complete we were told we would be allowed to protest at Gorsedd Stones in Welshpool, 11 miles from the BNP site. 2 police again boarded the bus and with an escort of 3 police vans we were taken to the protest site





At Gorsedd Stones we were able to meet up with other protestors from around the country, a few had briefly reached the BNP festival site, others had been arrested for daubing an anti-nazi slogan on the approach road. We heard speeches from Anti Nazi League members and Plaid Cymru assembly member Helen Jones. Attempts to march into welshpool were met by Police on horseback and after a couple of hours we elected to disperse.









Some 50 protestors then headed into Welshpool in small groups and it was there that I witnessed Confrontation policing at it\'s most bizarre. Groups of officers gathered along the main shopping street searching people at random, Saturday shoppers and media film crews were not exempt. Other officers forced drinkers inside pubs and filmed everything including a group of local ladies who had gathered to sing anti-nazi songs.



I saw a group of workers outside the bakery taking in the proceedings and looking at a local paper, whose headline read that the threat of protests was damaging the town\'s commerce. I asked one if she felt the level of policing was necessary.
"Well we\'ve got to have order, haven\'t we"
I said that there had never been likely to be disorder
"That\'s not what they said on the TV, we don\'t want all our windows smashed in"
I explained that We never came here to smash windows, and that in the cities where trouble has occurred it had been local residents, venting their anger after the BNP have stirred up race hate"
"Well we must be watching the wrong TV" she replied to general agreement.


It was a reminder if needed that most people believe what the TV says, and the mainstream media accepts almost everything it is fed by the Police. More worryingly the peaceful Anti-Nazi protestors were not differentiated in the News from the BNP, we had been portrayed as mindless thugs who would disrupt the town\'s life and now the town\'s life was being disrupted with shoppers in the high street outnumbered by police.




We left soon afterwards, hopefully our peaceful actions did a little to deter the image that all protestors bring strife and carnage wherever they go. Unfortunately the BNPs festival was not stopped, and reports we got also suggested that their members had been escorted to the site without suffering police searches or harassment.