Clash in Red Lion Square
The front of the Liberation march came westwards along Theobald's Road and entered Red Lion Square by Old North Street before turning right where a platform was set up for the meeting. A police cordon blocked the square to the left of Old North Street.
A substantial number of marchers passed this cordon peacefully and assembled in front of the platform where the Labour MP for Southall Syd Bidwell was to address them.
The cordon was then charged by the larger contingent from the IMG who were closely followed by the smaller CPE(M-L) contingent . Several minutes of pushing and scuffling followed. There were several charges and counter-charges. The police cordon was reinforced by members of the Special Patrol Group and by mounted police who eventually succeeded in forcing the demonstrators back. Photos show the use of truncheons by some police officers. At least one demonstrator reported being knocked to the ground and trampled by a police horse. Many demonstrators were forced back up Old North Street but a few retreated into the square.
The police then forcibly cleared all remaining demonstrators from the square whether they had taken part in the original confrontation or not. A large number of demonstrators had passed the police cordon peacefully before the charge. Demonstrators from the International Socialists were specifically instructed by their stewards to withdraw from the area of fighting. Nonetheless, the police aggressively forced all the Liberation marchers from the square, in spite of the remonstrations of Syd Bidwell MP.
Read more about this topic: Red Lion Square Disorders
Famous quotes containing the words clash, red, lion and/or square:
“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
—Marc Chagall (1889–1985)
“To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl’d away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,
The cattle huddled on the lea;”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)