24.11.2006

Leeds Crit­i­cal Mass ends with two cyclists being assault­ed by police and dri­ven away to sta­tion.

The month­ly gath­er­ing of cyclist keen to fos­ter some free­dom on the road and gain some space on the con­gest­ed Fri­day evening streets of Leeds city cen­tre set off just before 6pm tonight, after the usu­al 20 min­utes of nat­ter­ing and this month the added joy of watch­ing the Ger­man Christ­mas mar­ket com­ing to life. The turn-out of 20 was in high spir­its, with a cho­rus of tin­kling bells, tri­umphant horns and cheer­ful whoop­ing, and was soon joined by some enthu­si­as­tic late com­ers on Mer­rion Street adding a fur­ther feel­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the group. The horn beep­ing and engine revving from the queue of cars behind start­ed lat­er than usu­al as the car­a­van turned west past Leeds bus sta­tion on the first loop, but as usu­al the seren­i­ty of cycling freely and unthreat­ened around the inner city loop drowned that out, the cars were reduced to a pow­er­less crawl; con­ver­sa­tions between cycling strangers became the order of the hour. The seren­i­ty was marred slight­ly as an incom­pe­tent, impa­tient, learn­er plat­ed motor­cy­clist clum­si­ly barged through the clus­ter and swerved into one cyclist. But the jour­ney con­tin­ued onwards onto the sec­ond loop. As the rain became heav­ier the con­sen­sus of the group was to con­tin­ue round as far as the Com­mon Place for a warm­ing cup­pa and chat, pre­sum­ably about how fun cycling and crit­i­cal mass specif­i­cal­ly is.

After pass­ing under the rail­way by the Leeds Col­lege of Music, the lights turned red and the pro­ces­sion slowed to its halt and allowed the group to con­dense. But as the bikes came to a slow halt the sound of sirens from behind grew loud­er. Sight­ing a blue light­ed van shaped vehi­cle approach­ing and pre­sum­ing an ambu­lance, bikes were moved to the side of the road to allow it to pass. But as the lights got near­er it became obvi­ous it was in fact a police van, fol­lowed close­ly by a car. The van screeched to a halt a in an instant an aggres­sive man­nered police­man marched out of the van and with­out hes­i­ta­tion hurled one cyclist and bike to the floor, he was then man­han­dled and thrown into the back of the police van which had been opened by his col­league, arrest­ed appar­ent­ly for obstruc­tion of the high­way. The two offi­cers were soon joined by two oth­ers from the car which pulled up fur­ther down the road. Threats to near­by cyclists were blared out and at least one oth­er per­son was dragged into the back of the van. “You’ve go no light­sâ€? came the accu­sa­tion. “Your next unless you get out of hereâ€?, from anoth­er police­man. “We’ve got you on CCTVâ€?. At this point the aggres­sion of the first offi­cer had evolved into an obvi­ous seething anger and he came at the main group of cyclist bark­ing fur­ther threats but was soon pulled away and con­vinced “that we can’t do any­moreâ€?.
“I appre­ci­ate the point you’re try­ing to make,â€? stat­ed his calm­ing col­league. “but you’re obstruct­ing the high­way. Get off the road and get out of here.â€? And they left, with three of the group in the back of their van. Bemused, angered and riled the remain­ing cyclists trouped back to The Com­mon Place and then made their way to the Kirk­gate police sta­tion.

After a long wait we were told that the offi­cer about whom the com­plaint of bru­tal­i­ty was to be made was the per­son who was on duty to han­dle com­plaints on that shift, and it was there­fore not pos­si­ble to make a com­plaint. Also it was revealed that those arrest­ed were in the process of being released. The charge of obstruc­tion clear­ly did not hold any strength and the aggres­sion and con­tempt that the vio­lence show by the police was com­plete­ly inex­plic­a­ble.

Maybe it was an attempt to rat­tle fear into those of us try­ing to make a pro-cycling state­ment on cycle unfriend­ly streets, an attempt pos­si­bly to flex the mus­cles from a force who want to elim­i­nate the voice of dis­sent and sub­due peo­ple through a dis­play of aggres­sion and fear instill­ing. Maybe it was just that the offi­cers who made the call were hav­ing a shit day and want­ed to take it out on some­one, the adren­a­lin from the con­fronta­tion and the posi­tion of pow­er going to their heads and pre­vent­ing ratio­nal and calm behav­iour?

What­ev­er it was, it was out­ra­geous and dis­grace­ful, although in many ways sad­ly not unex­pect­ed. And despite this shock­ing police dis­play, Crit­i­cal Mass will con­tin­ue to be held in Leeds on the last Fri­day of each month. Bring your best horn, a loud bell, and your lights, and come and help reclaim the streets for cyclists.