Re: Mass protests - Agent provocateur
Protest I went to (Criminal justice act 1994) got derailed by a secondary unrelated group with floats, loud music and a ton of equipment. They just appeared about 15min after our protest group reached Hide park.
Hearing the loud music, which was drowning out the protest leaders speech over a loud speaker system, my protest group wandered over to see what was going on. They were met by a police picket line. I managed to get a prime seat on top of a green substation.
One lad (a tad drunk), about 6 meters to my left and down, dropped his placard so he stepped one step forward, past the railing and police line, to pick it up. He was immediately jumped on by 3 MET officers and pummelled with their shields (round smaller ones). The lads mates tried to pull him back to safety but got dragged along with the lad across the police line and beaten.
The surrounding group seeing this surged forward.
This continued, wave after wave, for hours.
.
Afterwards almost all of the papers declared that the protesters were exactly the reason for these laws.
The Times (pre-Murdock) however did come close to the truth.