Titnore protesters defy police — but one arrest

A PROTEST against the destruc­tion of Tit­nore Woods in Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, went ahead this after­noon (Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 29), despite police attempts to crush it. One man was arrest­ed but at the time of writ­ing is not known to have been charged with any offence.

A cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion in the local press was fol­lowed up by mas­sive over-polic­ing, with around 60 pro­test­ers faced by the same num­ber of cops, some of whom had been draft­ed in from as far away as Hast­ings in East Sus­sex, 50 miles away. The event was billed as a vig­il for the death of democ­ra­cy, because of the way over­whelm­ing local oppo­si­tion to the 875-home estate and asso­ci­at­ed road widen­ing has been bull­dozed out of the way by the local coun­cil, and a “cof­fin” bear­ing the corpse of democ­ra­cy was parad­ed.

But the title has proved high­ly appro­pri­ate in anoth­er way, as Sus­sex Police proved once again how far we have pro­gressed towards a police state, with protest vir­tu­al­ly regard­ed as a crim­i­nal act. Local peo­ple arriv­ing ear­ly for the vig­il at the Tit­nore Lane round­about on the A259 were told by police that they would not be allowed to stay there after 2pm — the adver­tised start of the vig­il. Cops tried to hand pieces of paper to every­one arriv­ing, out­lin­ing restric­tions on where peo­ple could protest.

It seems the police were plan­ning to force the vig­il away from the high­ly vis­i­ble round­about and into an “autho­rised” protest zone where they could not be seen. But when the num­bers swelled and they realised any heavy-hand­ed­ness would be embar­rass­ing­ly vis­i­ble to queues of motorists, they backed down and did not enforce this pol­i­cy. With video-cam­era wield­ing “evi­dence gath­er­ers” cre­at­ing a mood of intim­i­da­tion, the police began their famil­iar pet­ty games of provo­ca­tion. Peo­ple were giv­en con­stant­ly shift­ing instruc­tion as to where they were “per­mit­ted” to stand. Some­times they were not allowed to cross the road and some­times they had to.

A group of peo­ple who decid­ed to use the foot­bridge over the A259 were told this was not per­mit­ted because it rep­re­sent­ed a traf­fic haz­ard. Ear­li­er on, these same peo­ple had been direct­ed to use the bridge by police. Even­tu­al­ly, a man who declined to cross over a road and rejoin the main demon­stra­tion was arrest­ed and bun­dled into a police van, to the anger of fel­low pro­test­ers.

He is cur­rent­ly still being held at Wor­thing Police Sta­tion in Dur­ring­ton, but had not been charged with any­thing yet, accord­ing to lat­est infor­ma­tion. After the arrest, police moved in rein­force­ments from around the cor­ner some­where and adopt­ed a more aggres­sive stance, forc­ing peo­ple away from the side of the road and form­ing a line in front of them, osten­si­bly to “stop an acci­dent” but clear­ly to stop the plac­ards being seen by motorists, many of whom hoot­ed their sup­port. When the vig­il end­ed at 4pm, evi­dence gath­er­ers fol­lowed a group of pro­test­ers to Gor­ing sta­tion and con­tin­ued film­ing them until they board­ed the train towards Wor­thing.

Police appear to have formed some kind of exclu­sion zone around Tit­nore Woods them­selves, per­haps fear­ing a land occu­pa­tion and protest camp, and there were reports this evening that some Tit­nore Lane res­i­dents who had been on the protest were stopped from return­ing to their own home after­wards.

Update on arrest

The arrest­ed man was released on bail ear­li­er this evening, hav­ing been charged with “fail­ure to obey con­di­tions imposed on a pub­lic assem­bly”, with a court date of Wednes­day Novem­ber Novem­ber 9 at Wor­thing Mag­is­trates Court. Mean­while, there are sug­ges­tions that the “Sec­tion 14” order imposed on the event by the police may have been ille­gal…