Trafalgar Square Preparations
In November 1989 the All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation (The Fed) was set up largely by the leftist Militant tendency as a national body which included many Anti-Poll Tax Unions. The committee called a demonstration in London for 31 March 1990, the Saturday before Community Charge implementation in England and Wales, it having been introduced in Scotland a year earlier.
Three days before the event the organisers realised the march would be larger than the 60,000 capacity of Trafalgar Square. It asked permission from the Metropolitan Police Service and the Department of the Environment to divert the march to Hyde Park. The request was denied. on the basis that all of the policing had been arranged for Trafalgar Square and there was no time to re-plan it.
Seemingly at odds with this planning, a building site on Trafalgar Square with easily accessible supplies of bricks and scaffolding was left largely unsecured while the police set up their Centre of Operations on the other side of the square.
In the days before the demonstration two "feeder" marches had followed the routes of the two mob armies of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. These arrived at Kennington Park in South London on 31 March.
Read more about this topic: Poll Tax Riots
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Nelson stylites in Trafalgar Square
Reminds the British what once they were.”
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990)
“Now stiff on a pillar with a phallic air
Nelson stylites in Trafalgar Square
Reminds the British what once they were.”
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990)
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How it sat like a square box!”
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