The big CND Glasgow Rally on 7 June became the scene of a showdown with Glasgow’s loyalist police over their suppression of Hunger-strike activists. Members of the Glasgow Hunger-strike Action Committee and FRFI sellers were there leafletting and selling to the 6-7000 assembled. Suddenly 4 policemen descended on a woman activist who was sitting on the ground talking to people. They lifted her bodily, seized her leaflets and collecting tin and dragged her off.
A crowd followed and as it grew in size, police were immobilised and stood pinned against a park railing surrounding the woman. The crowd shouted: ‘Free speech on Ireland!’ ‘Police out!’ ‘Let her go!’ CND stewards rushed over to help the policemen, saying they didn’t want ‘any trouble”. ‘Tell the police that!’ yelled the crowd. Young CNDers shouted ‘Scab’ ‘Police touts’ at them and drowned them out.
Police reinforcements arrived and the crowd was manhandled and thrown about. Two young people who were thrown against the police van were assaulted and arrested and the van sped off.
Police refused to say which station they were being taken to but a large number of people milled around eager to pursue the matter. Many gave their names and addresses to an SCCL member present and to FRFI supporters on the scene.
The woman was detained all night in Stewart street police station for refusing to co-operate with fingerprinting. Next morning she appeared at Glasgow District Court charged with ‘Breach of the peace by collecting for Glasgow Hunger-strike Action Committee’. The police are determined to criminalise any and every attempt to build a solidarity campaign in Scotland – because they are terrified of the anti-imperialist feeling in a significant section of the Scottish working-class.
The CND organisers stood completely exposed to the radical youth and others who witnessed their pro-police feeling. This pacifist campaign is enlisting angry working class youth and diverting their energies into long marches to nowhere. A significant section saw the truth on Sunday 7 June in Glasgow. We ask them to step forward, and enlist in the revolutionary fight with FRFI.
FRFI 11 July/August 1981
