Justice Bill protesters in West End battle with police

A POLICEWOMAN suffered chest wounds and another officer was unconscious with head injuries last night after hundreds of protesters opposing the Criminal Justice Bill clashed with riot police, turning Park Lane in the West End of London into a battlefield.

Demonstrators lined pavements, hurling blazing rubbish bins, bottles and cans at officers. They ripped apart bus shelters and threw paving stones and bricks.

A police spokeswoman said the woman officer had been injured by a flying concrete block. An inspector suffered head injuries. Both were in hospital. The spokeswoman said their condition was serious. Six officers were detained in St Thomas's Hospital, London, with a variety of injuries from broken ribs to twisted ankles. Another eight and two civilians were treated after inhaling tear-gas. A total of 39 people were arrested.

At the height of the battle up to 800 protesters were pitched against police in Park Lane. Others ran down Oxford Street, smashing store windows, after a series of clashes which began at around 5pm in Hyde Park when several thousand protesters tried to stage a rave party at Speakers' Corner. They tried to bring sound systems into the park and began to dance and beat drums.

As the crowd began hurling missiles and chanting 'kill the Bill', police charged near an area known as Lovers' Walk. Revellers and members of the press were caught in the ensuing clashes. Several hundred riot police on foot followed up with baton charges.

The crowd scattered across the park and into Park Lane, where the clashes continued, watched by tourists and business people inside London's most expensive hotels.

An Independent reporter, Danny Penman, was hit by a policeman across the forehead with a truncheon. Two other policemen came from behind and swiped him across the legs and then the stomach with batons.

The final battle of the night started at 9pm when a line of several hundred police in body armour marched across Hyde Park driving the demonstrators into two other lines of police as a helicopter flew low overhead. The marchers, many bleeding from head wounds, fled across nearby roads. Last night rally organisers condemed the police operation as heavy- handed and 'provocative'.

Police said it was one of the worst riots they had seen since the poll tax demonstrations of the 1980s. They believed the demonstration been infiltrated by an element determined to see violence at the end of what had started out as a peaceful march.

Chief Superintendent Dick Cullen said: 'People came here looking for a fight. People do not suddenly find bricks and paving stones on a route, because we have checked it before they start.'

The Metropolitan Police said 2,000 officers were on duty yesterday, 400 of whom were specially equipped with protective gear. They estimated that a total of 20,000 people had turned out against the Criminal Justice Bill, which provides for anti-terrorist measures and new police powers against trespass to prevent illicit rave parties and music festivals and to move gypsies and travellers on.

(Photograph omitted)

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