Banged up for democracy – the UK kleptocracy cannot tolerate dissent. Updated for 2024

Updated: 22/12/2024





I spent Valentine’s Night in jail in solitary confinement for 16 hours, contemplating the fact that my lawyer said I was facing up to 14 years jail. Why?

In the UK, Boris Johnson owes his political power to and literally gets paid millions of pounds by the tax-dodging extremist right wing media billionaires.

He abuses that power via his private security corporation guards to order the arrests of the Occupy pro-democracy and anti-tax dodging protesters.

I had simply been standing silently and peacefully beside Boris Johnson’s private guard whilst he was handing out arrest warning notices to peaceful protesters on Parliament Green (in ‘Tarpaulin Square’).

I was holding a cardboard coffin placard with the slogan “UK Democracy RIP – killed by corporate billionaires”, made by Nigel Lowell. There is loads of video footage and picture evidence showing me silently peacefully protesting (see below).

This private security guard then told the police that he was “intimidated” by my doing this and that I was seeking to “intimidate him from giving evidence as a court witness” at my trumped up trial for assault in June.

Evidence is so passé …

So without a shred of evidence of any such intimidation, the police a half-hour later in pretty brutal fashion came in force to arrest me, as I was peacefully listening to the democratic discussion being held by the Occupy Democracy General Assembly on the grass.

The police subsequently arrested three more of us on the instructions of the ‘Boris Guards’, including the inspirationally peaceful Nigel Lowell and the legendary live-news journalist Lorenzo Obi Abidanas, for simply being on the Green in Tarpaulin Square.

What I think is really important to know is that it is clear that the London Mayor Boris Johnson has given the orders that anybody who dares to protest about the lack of democracy in Parliament Green are to be arrested.

But meanwhile the real 1% criminals that Johnson serves go un-arrested and indeed they pour money into Johnson’s pockets and are treated to VIP hospitality at our taxpayers’ expense.

Boris Johnson owes his political career (and his power to order peaceful pro-democracy protesters to be arrested) to the extremist right-ring billionaire media-moguls like Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay Brothers and rich Tory donors.

So when Murdoch was vilified for his role overseeing a press empire mired up to its neck in hacking the phones of the relatives of dead British servicemen, Johnson as his key political servant, instead of calling for this man to be banned from owning UK media, shamed London by inviting him instead as a VIP guest to our taxpayer funded Olympics.

And let’s also remember that Johnson rakes in a quarter of a million pounds each year from the tax-dodging owners of The Telegraph, the Barclay Brothers, who avoid UK taxes by living in the notorious tax-havens of Jersey and Monaco.

Boris Johnson is the servant extraordinaire of The Prostitute State. And he abuses his political power to crack down on those who are protesting at the corrupt hijacking of our democracy by these billionaire tax dodgers and media moguls.

We will not be intimidated!

Occupy Democracy and Occupy Rupert Murdoch Week will not be intimidated by the arrests and trumped up charges by his corporate bully-boy hired hands.

We will be back again in Tarpaulin Square with our pro-democracy monthly protest events and talks on March and at Murdoch’s HQ at The Shard from March 23rd-29th.

It is time to say no more to the calamitous destruction of the planet and the hijacking of the wealth of the 99% by the 1%. Be there if you care!

Meanwhile I continue to be on bail now for seven separate charges arising out of my peaceful protesting on Tarpaulin Square, as the police waste time investigating these ‘offences’:

  1. Accused of possessing plastic tarpaulin sheet under my arm in Tarpaulin Square at 10am on a sunny morning at October Occupy Democracy.
  2. Accused of refusing to allow police to confiscate my folded tarpaulin in Tarpaulin Square.
  3. Accused of refusing to obey instruction to leave Tarpaulin Square when instructed to do so by police as I was in possession of a folded tarpaulin.
  4. Accused of not giving my name and address when arrested for being in possession of a folded ground sheet in Tarpaulin Square (there is film footage of my actually giving them my name and address whilst being brutally taken to the ground and handcuffed and physically lifted bodily into the air and escorted in military formation to the police van by a phalanx of 30 officers including TSG at October Occupy Democracy!!
  5. Accusation of “assault” for bumping into Boris’s private security guard when I was trying to protect a peaceful protester from being attacked by the guards who had been throwing peaceful protesters over the iron fence they had erected to implement Boris Johnson’s ban on our protest. (Trial arranged for June 18th) at December Occupy Democracy.
  6. Accusation of “intimidation of a witness in a criminal trial” for standing silently and peacefully with the cardboard coffin stating “Democracy RIP – Killed by Corporate Billionaires” at February Occupy Democracy.
  7. Accused of standing on Parliament Green on Valentine’s Night at February Occupy Democracy.

All charges have been dropped for the arrest they made on me for standing in front of Mandela’s Statue at the November pro-democracy protest with a sign saying “Free Nelson Mandela”.

 


 

Donnachadh McCarthy is author of ‘The Prostitute State’ – how Britain’s Democracy Has Been Bought, an Occupy Democracy supporter and former Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats. He is currently a member of no political party.

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