SALON

Thursday, Apr 28, 2011 8:29 PM UTC

Activists arrested in London ahead of royal wedding

Police raid squats across the city before the big royal wedding

By

Topics: Kate and William: The Royal Wedding, Anarchism,

Activists arrested in London ahead of royal weddingAs part of security preparations for the upcoming royal wedding, British police officers use a micro-camera to inspect the inner tubes of a scaffolding reserved for media, outside the Westminster Abbey in central London, Tuesday, April 26, 2011. Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton will get married on Friday, April 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)(Credit: AP)

Arrests and police raids on squats across London appear to be preemptive strikes against activists before the royal wedding Friday.

The Guardian reported that the police raided five squats across the U.K. capital on Thursday, issuing arrests for petty crimes. But few are convinced that the arrests are not directly connected to Friday’s festivities.

A spokesman denied the raids had anything to do with the royal wedding. Police said the raid at a squat known as Ratstar in Camberwell was carried out under a section 18 warrant to search for stolen goods.

A spokesman said once officers arrived at the address they found that those inside were bypassing the electricity meter and were arrested for “electricity abstraction”.

“It’s business as usual,” a spokesman said. “This is nothing to do with the royal wedding.”

As the Guardian notes, senior police officers stated explicitly last week that “they would be taking preemptive action, including raiding squats and making arrests, in advance of the wedding to ensure that no criminal activity took place on the day,” which makes apparent that today’s arrests have little to do with “electricity abstraction” and more to do with containing unwanted elements in advance of the wedding day.

Thursday’s allegedly unconnected arrests come on top of the news, reported earlier this week by the Telegraph, that nearly 70 anarchists have been banned from entering central London on the day of the wedding. (The bans are bail conditions.)

However, no arrests have been made under conspiracy laws, which means that in not one instance have police found sufficient evidence of plots to conduct criminal activity on Friday, which would legally justify (explicitly) preemptive arrests.

Rather, the thinly veiled anticipatory action has taken the form of arrests based on minor past offenses, including alleged involvement in the disorder at recent protests in London.

Continue Reading Close

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com. More Natasha Lennard.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 5 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations