Initially @MetPoliceEvents sent messages urging ‘all parties’ – British National Party and Unite Against Facism protesters – to return to their designated demonstration zones. Presumably, as agreed prior to the event.

Reports of this ‘double kettle’ then came in. The double kettle was in fact the two separate, isolated protest zones mentioned above by @MetPoliceEvents for both parties.

Section 12 was invoked to ‘impose conditions on public processions’ and Section 14 to ‘impose conditions on public assemblies’. Both allow senior police officers to intervene in protest demonstrations if they reasonably believe disturbances will arise without their intervention.

With 20 minutes remaining before both parties’ protest curfew @MetPoliceEvents reminded demonstrators that remaining in the area could result in their arrest, this having previously restricted movement for a large duration of the allotted demonstration time.

The London Metropolitan Police consequently arrested members from both sides and packed them on to waiting TfL buses.

Come the 4pm deadline @MetPoliceEvents posted an aerial photograph presumably taken from the force’s helicopter allegedly showing an absence of police barriers. It was expressed in the same message that people were ‘free to leave’. But that wasn’t really the whole story because, as I mentioned on the day:

As the demonstration was only legally allowed to continue until 4pm, and after hours of containing both crowds, police officers tactically released all those still demonstrating. So the strategy shifted from arresting those who sought to escape the containments to arresting those who sought to remain in the same (but now ‘unkettled’) space.

‘Free to leave’ then, was another way of the police force saying protesters were ‘not free to stay’. A designated shift in strategy from (legally) containing potentially mobile and thus, illegal protesters to legally releasing static, illegal protesters. Although at the time many simply believed the Met Police were telling lies and were still containing people, I’m more of the opinion that they took advantages of the slippy legal nature of their tactics and were in fact releasing both groups – only to arrest if individuals refused to leave the area.

According to ITV and other sources 58 UAF protesters were arrested for a breach of Section 14.

This 360 degree photo from the day is incredible. It purportedly shows a police ‘snatch-squad’ in action. This is a commonly used tactic (rather than a unit per se) by riot police to dive into large crowds and ‘snatch’ key protagonists. Note the London Met’s own FIT (Forward Intelligence Team) cameraman to the upper left of the incident and other media to the immediate right on the pavement.