It’s all been a bit lively in the West End of London today, with protesters occupying a nearby building in Beak Street, before being forcibly evicted by police. More protesters have been moving about the West End, all followed by large numbers of police (and a not insubstantial number of media).
We had something of a strong vantage point for many of the events as they unfolded. Most notably, there was a protester on the roof of the occupied building on Beak Street (a former police training centre that has been empty for a few years now) who appeared to try to jump off the roof of the building before being wrestled to the floor by police in climbing gear who were tethered to the building. It’s still not clear what he was trying to do, but police probably saved his life by dragging him to the floor.
One of the things we got asked to do was to not send around photos or videos to the outside world while police operations were in progress. That said, there were TV cameras crews sited all around us, including on the roof over my head.
Anyway, although at time of writing, there is still lots of activity in London, I think it’s probably now “safe” to publish some of the pictures and a short video that I took.