Anti-monarchy protesters to launch legal action against Metropolitan Police

Force made 64 arrests, charging four people with public order and drugs offences

Police make an arrest near the coronation procession between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. AFP

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Anti-monarchy protesters who were arrested before King Charles III’s coronation are considering legal action against London's Metropolitan Police.

There should be a “full inquiry” into who authorised the arrests during the “disgraceful episode”, chief executive of anti-monarchy campaign group Republic Graham Smith said on Monday.

Eight protesters from Republic detained in London have all been told no charges will be brought against them, said Mr Smith, , who was among those detained on the day.

“The speed with which they did this demonstrates they were very quickly aware they had made a very serious error of judgment and there will be action taken again,” he said.

“I’m obviously relieved they dropped it so quickly but very angry they even went down this road, robbing people of their liberty for absolutely no reason.

“There was no evidence of any ability or intent to commit any offence and they simply decided to arrest us and that is outrageous.”

The Metropolitan Police has expressed “regret” that the protesters from Republic were arrested.

The force made 64 arrests during the day, charging four people with public order and drugs offences. Climate activists from Just Stop Oil were among those arrested.

Green politician Caroline Russell, who heads the London Assembly's Police and Crime Committee, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Monday that she planned to question the force about the arrests — which she called “really worrying” — when the committee next meets members police officers.

“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,” she said.

“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.

“The Police and Crime Committee, we question the mayor, Mopac (Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime) and the Metropolitan Police. We meet every fortnight, so of course we will be questioning this, because I'm sure members of all parties will want to have their questions answered.”

On Monday, Rishi Sunak backed the Metropolitan Police amid the criticism.

Speaking to broadcasters after volunteering at a lunch club in Hertfordshire, the Prime Minister said: “The police are operationally independent of government. They will make these decisions based on what they think is best.

“Actually I’m grateful to the police and everyone who played a part in ensuring that this weekend has gone so well, so successfully and so safely.

“That was an extraordinary effort by so many people and I’m grateful to them for all their hard work.”

He added: “No other country in the world could put on such a dazzling spectacle and it was a proud expression of our history, our culture, our tradition and also a reflection of the modern character of our country.

“It was deeply moving to be in the coronation service and incredibly uplifting and it was an experience I think nobody will forget for the rest of their lives.”

Mr Smith of Republic called his arrest “disgraceful”.

He said the group was detained and searched while unloading a van but had been in touch with the Met about its protest plans in the months leading up to the coronation.

Members of his group were told they had been arrested on suspicion of carrying materials to lock themselves on to infrastructure, which he said was not true.

“There was nothing that we had in our possession that could have allowed us to lock on. They then took us and held us for 16 hours,” he said.

“They also said they had intelligence, which is untrue. If they did have intelligence, their intelligence officers are either lying or incompetent because there was never any discussion, thought, email message, [of] any intent to do anything disruptive. And we had four months of close conversation with the Metropolitan Police.”

He later admitted the group had “some straps” but said they could not have been used to latch themselves on to anything.

“The first thing my solicitor said when she went to the police station, to the police officers, [was] this is an unlawful arrest," Mr Smith continued.

“They said that we had some straps, which we did, which were not even physically possible to lock on. They could have simply said, 'Look, we're not comfortable with you having these straps so we'll just hold on to those and you can carry on with your business and protest peacefully'.”

Mr Smith said the fact people were looking forward to the event and would not have wanted it to be disrupted was “not an excuse” to arrest him and other protesters.

He told Today: “That's not an excuse to rob people of their rights. It's not an excuse to arrest people and detain them for 16 hours, because some people want to enjoy a party.

“That's a disgraceful suggestion and quite frankly this is a political issue and therefore obviously it's going to face protest.”

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He said partygoers should put up with the protests.

“You cannot say that they have to enjoy a party and therefore other people should be arrested,” he said.

“They stopped us because the law was introduced, rushed in last week, to give them the powers to stop us on any flimsy pretext.

“That law means we no longer in this country have the right to protest, we only have the freedom to protest contingent on the permission of senior police officers and politicians and it's my view that those senior police officers were under immense pressure from politicians.”

Ken Marsh, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, told Radio 4 that while protests are permitted in the UK, officers had to balance the decision over whether to prevent it with a person’s intent to “cause an incident”.

“As the police of this country we police without fear or favour, as you well know,” he said.

“And we have to take into consideration everything, everything that at that moment is put in front of us and individuals' intent to cause any incident which will affect others.

“A police officer would only arrest someone if they had the power to do so. Because as you well know, the transparency in this country is greater than any other in the world in terms of being able to investigate what took place after.”

The government defended the police's handling of the protesters on Sunday. Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said she thought the police got the “balance right”.

“What they had to do was to police an international event on the world stage and I think they took that into account in their policing,” she said.