h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just before 5pm, we were standing around in a large group, by the statue of Nye Bevan. There were lots of placards - "South Wales Coalition to Stop the War", "Tony the Tyrant and Bush the Bloody", "Bongs not Bombs". Most of the people there were students, but there were a lot of older people, parents with children, even an elderly blind woman who sat in the road with the rest of us, carrying her white stick. I was wandering around, looking for a group to join.

Then I saw some police running up past the castle. With boltcutters. Almost immediately after that, somebody shouted "This way!", and the whole group ran off after the police.

A human chain had formed across the road, which is one of the nerve centres of the main bus route. They were holding hands, inside lengths of wide grey plastic drainpipe. The traffic had come to a complete halt, and the other protestors quickly filled the gaps around them, completely blocking the road.

The police came up, asked us to move, we didn't. All the traffic was turning. Then an ambulance came through.

We all cleared the road immediately - there was no question of blocking the path of an ambulance. People lifted the chain members, who didn't have the use of their arms. The police helped too, violently shoving people out of the way. The ambulance went through, and the police immediately piled into the road to try and stop us coming back. Unimpressed, we sat back down. A couple of people ran into the police or tried to push past them, and got roughed up a little for their trouble.

This repeated itself - two or three more ambulances came through, on both sides of the road. Sometimes one came through on either side at the same time. After the fourth ambulance, we got a little tired of the charade, and refused to move. A rumour swept the crowd that the ambulance was for one of the protesters. People shouted, trying to find out who it was. There was no response. We didn't move. As the ambulance turned and left, we saw that it was driven by a police officer. It never returned.

There were no more ambulances after that. The police withdrew to around a corner, leaving only their Mobile CCTV van to spy on us.

After a couple of hours, people were getting tired of sitting in the road, so a decision was taken to move to St Mary's Street. After a lot of talking and idling - think herding cats - we set off in that direction. Somebody placed a NO WAR placard on the back of the CCTV van. The police formed a cordon across Castle Street to stop us going any further, so we turned and went past Burger King instead. Somebody yelled that the police were going around to stop us, so the crowd burst into a run.

When I got there, the yellow CCTV van was already there, as were some officers. People ran out into the road and sat in front of the van. It drove towards them fast and nearly hit a couple of people. The police were dragging people out of the road. People shouted "Sit down, sit down". As more people arrived, everyone piled across the street and sat down, blocking it.

The police put a cordon at each side of the group.

We sat, shouting. People wandered through the crowd, advertising protests at a later date. Word passed through the crowd that we were going to try and leave towards the castle. The crowd began to move. The police blocked the road. People kept pushing. Some people ran into the police, trying to break the cordon. There was a crush for a few seconds, then a cry went up of "there are children in the crowd!". The pushing stopped.

All the police from the other side of the crowd had run around to strengthen the cordon that was under strain, so we all turned around and walked away from them down St Mary's Street. Again, the moving crowd broke into a run. A beer bottle flew past my legs and shattered in the road. Somebody had accidentally kicked it. At the junction with Wood Street, we all sat down again. There was some chanting, somebody was selling badges, and people were playing drums and dancing.

Eventually the crowd moved on again, down Caroline Street towards the Hayes. It was at that point that the trouble started. At this point, the protest was still entirely peaceful. Nothing was being damaged, nothing was being thrown. However, a mob of police barged into the crowd, grabbing two people who had been leading chants. They knocked them to the ground, dragged them to a police van, and threw them in.

People were incensed by this - it wasn't necessary. Shouts of "let them out" went up. People got more and more angered, but there was still no violence. Someone else was thrown into the van. Then a line of police, who appeared as if from nowhere, charged the crowd. They had batons out and were using them. We were penned up against David Morgan's. On the outside of the crowd, a policeman brandishing a baton spat "Stay there!" at me. (I'm 5'2" and female).

Like cattle, we were herded towards the castle. A couple of people, me included, left the main body of the group by taking the left turn at Waterstone's. We weren't stopped, although one of the police yelled at us either to get inside the cordon or go home. I spoke to someone who said that he'd been hit in the ribs with a baton while his hands were raised in surrender and he was backing away. He also said that the officer who hit him had removed his shoulder lapels (sp?) with his number on.

I followed the protest down towards the stadium and Westgate Street. People made an attempt to break out of the cordon. I saw a couple of police vans pulling up, but nothing after that.


Indymedia have reported that the "one person injured" that BBC Cymru reported, was left lying in the street bleeding from a baton blow to the *back* of his head. A couple of people who returned found him there ten minutes later. No ambulance had been called.