Hello I’m Trevor Weekend and I am here to describe the awful events of 30th June when a day of mass strikes by public service workers passed off peacefully.
Myself and all the other journalists assembled hoping to catch sight of the kind of rioting and civil disobedience that has been seen on the streets of Athens. What followed was nothing short of a disgrace. Nothing happened. No windows were smashed, no protestors were kettled, no walls were daubed with grafitti. Just a load of people marching for something they believed in.
This was a complete waste of my time. What are us poor journalists supposed to do if a protest doesn’t turn into anarchy? What are we supposed to report on?
At one point I did see a group of about twenty people sat on the floor wearing black hoodies and surrounded by police. I immediately telephoned by colleagues at Sky News and they sent their Skycopter into action to cover this. They filmed this scene for about 3 hours and then showed it on a repeat loop for a further 6 hours until they realised it was just a modern open air adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.
I roamed the streets for hour upon hour looking for trouble, I mean a story, and there are only so many Mildreds and Georges you can interview before you begin to realise that there may not be the biggest outbreak of mass disorder since the Poll Tax riots and that people may be there to just make their voices heard.
This would not do. I got together with a few of my journalistic colleagues and hunted down a few youths. We spotted a few near some shops and even better they seemed to be wearing hooded tops and low slung jeans. They fitted perfectly into the stereotypical view of what we think anarchists look like. We assembled at a safe distance across the road from them and began to hurl insults at them. “Get back to work! Thatcher was a genius!” We cried until our voices went hoarse.
Eventually the police asked us to move on or they would arrest us for breach of the peace. This was a flagrant breach of our rights to report upon a demonstration and is something that I will be taking up with their Chief Inspector after all what is the world coming to if journalists cannot report on peaceful demonstrations without fear of arrest?
