City leaders quizzed over handling of Birmingham city centre protests
“Coun Bore is trying to make a party political issue of this. We have done all we can within the law for the good of this city. There is a Labour Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, and perhaps Coun Bore should ask him to ban the demonstrations. Our advice is the police had no power to ban a static protest.”
Coun Rudge told the council that the police had done an excellent job in containing the trouble and blamed a tiny number of people for provoking violence, which he said had been blown out of proportion by the media.
“99.9 per cent of the communities of Birmingham had nothing to do with these protests and are behind us.”
Coun Khan pointed out that the League’s first protest on July 4 had been ‘brushed away’ as there were no rival protests to provoke trouble, but two recent demonstrations met with rival protests and each time escalated into disorder.
