A minister on Sunday defended the Metropolitan police after the force arrested 52 people before and during King Charles III’s coronation on Saturday.
Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said she believes the Met has got the balance right between the right to protest and policing an international event and that she has “huge confidence” in the police.
Graham Smith, CEO of the anti-monarchy group Republic, who was detained for around 16 hours on Saturday, called the arrests “a direct attack” on British democracy.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said she has some concerns that the police “may not have” gotten the balance right, while some Labour MPs took to Twitter to criticise the Met over the arrests.
As tens of thousands of people, including foreign heads of state, gathered at London’s Westminster Abbey to celebrate the coronation on Saturday, a total of 52 people were arrested, including eight Republic activists, some 20 climate activists from Just Stop Oil, and three people who were in possession of some rape alarms.
The Met has said the arrests were made for offences including affray, public order offences, breach of the peace, and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
The Met said it had received intelligence saying “protesters were determined to disrupt the coronation procession” including by attempting to “deface public monuments with paint, breach barriers, and disrupt the official movements.”
It also said officers seized the rape alarms after there had been “particular concern from military colleagues” that the alarms would “scare their horses involved in the procession.”
Smith told PA news agency on Sunday that all Republic activists have been released on bail and they are waiting to hear if the police will take further action.
He also said the activists were arrested for being equipped for locking on, a new offence under the Public Order Act.
Under the new Public Order Act, protesters who have an object with the intention of using it to “lock on” are liable to a fine, with those who block roads facing 12 months in prison.
The controversial law was enacted following climate protests in which activists attached themselves to roads, railings, other objects, or each other with glue or so-calling locking on devices to frustrate the police’s effort to remove them quickly.
In a statement, Smith said Republic’s planned protest was “peaceful and lawful.”
“These arrests are a direct attack on our democracy and the fundamental rights of every person in the country,” he said.
Smith accused the officers of showing “no judgement, no common sense, and no basic decency,” and said their action was “a heavy handed action which had the appearance of a pre-determined arrest that would have occurred regardless of the evidence or our actions.”
Frazer defended the Met on Sunday morning, Speaking on Sky’s “Sophy Ridge On Sunday” programme, the culture secretary said the police had to take into account that the coronation was an international event that “would have raised questions about national security.”
“What they have to do is balance the right to protest, which is important in a democracy. At the same time there’s the right of all those other people to enjoy what was a fabulous day,“ she said. ”I think, overall, they managed to get that balance right.”
She also said she trusts the police to use their new powers under the Public Order Act.
“I think it’s absolutely right that they have the powers that they need in order to ensure that people can go to go on their day-to-day lives at the same time as respecting people’s rights to protest,” she said.
Asked on the same programme if the police had got the balance right, Liberal Democrat deputy leader said she has “concerns that they may not have done.”
“We still need to see some more information coming out about what’s actually happened,” Cooper said. “Some of that information is unfolding. But, on the face of it, I do have concerns.”
She criticised the government over the new law, saying, “What worries me is that the Conservative government have now increased these sort of wide-ranging powers. … what they haven’t done is enshrined the sort of legal responsibility and the duty on the police to actually facilitate peaceful protest.”
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting told the “Sophy Ridge On Sunday” programme it was inappropriate for him to comment without all the facts.
“I think it’s the accountability that’s important and where concerns have been raised, whether that’s by Republic, the campaign for an elected head of state, or people more generally just concerned about [what] they’ve read in the papers or seen on the [television], it’s important that the police provide that accountability,” he said.
