10 August (Part 1) - Creepy Crawley
On a sunny Friday afternoon about 250 Antifa activists
assembled in the car park of The Holiday Inn Express in Crawley. They did not
arrive in dribs and drabs as one might expect if they were local residents but
in several large groups which one might assume had walked from the nearby Three Bridges railway station.
Another well organised demo.
The cameraman,
the same one who covered Plymouth, arrived well before the start
and spoke to several police officers. None knew what they were expecting to see.
The Antifa mob had a wider repertoire of chants than I have
heard elsewhere, some
set to song. As well as the usual “Get the Fascists off our streets” and the
usual claim that the streets belonged to them, “Queers for Palestine” and
something about Transvestites could also be heard. It was very noisy and muting the TV sound was a temptation.
Then they spotted just one man standing close to the car park perimeter who was
wearing a Union Jack shirt. That was all they needed to turn ugly. As they moved
in on him the police walked over to provide protection.
Not quite enough of it. Banners were thrust in his face while the peaceful
decent folk (as described in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph)
shouted at him from point blank range. “There are more of us than you” was the
repeated chant. The police moved Jackman backwards for his own protection and he began to sing Rule
Britannia as loudly as he could. Brave, Foolhardy or Provocative? Your guess is as good as mine.
The mob rushed him and one woman broke through the police line to assault him.
The police dragged her away but in what you may consider to be a fine display of two-tier policing she was
back again within seconds to do it again. No arrest. The cameraman withdrew for
his own safety and the man in the Union flag was not seen again.
The mob didn’t like being video’d. They came after the cameraman in balaclavas
and masks. Overall, the proportion with their faces obscured must have been around half.
Covid must be running riot in Crawley.
At first they poked the cameraman with an umbrella and then blocked his view with backpacks and cardboard banners. Eventually
they produced an enormous cloth banner and attempted to cover him in it so that nothing could be filmed.
The banner said ‘Fascists Get in the Sea’. Not sure why, if
anyone needs a good wash it is probably not the so called Fascists.
I thought the idea of the Antifa protest was for as many people as possible to see and support their actions but perhaps like
their counterparts in North Finchley
they had little idea of why they were there.
Half a dozen policemen stood idly by doing nothing about very obvious
harassment. When the threats to the cameraman rose to the next level just one
police officer (Photo 2) offered to escort him to a safer place but the balaclava men
merely followed with their banner so the cameraman had little option but to cease
filming for a while and presumably beat a hasty retreat.
These are the good people remember, they are constantly telling
us that they are. For the record one of the threatening gang came forward and
tried to reason with everyone, but it was one lone voice within an unruly mob.
When filming resumed I saw two men, seventyish I would guess, with a ring of
police officers around them being walked towards some police vans. There was
some comment that they may have been arrested but as they were not handcuffed it
was probably for protection from the surrounding mob. They had arrived on bicycles and the
police carefully collected them and put them in another van.
One might guess that if the pair had been arrested the police may not have exercised such care.
As far as I could tell, no one parading signs saying Immigrants Welcome Here
knocked on the hotel door and offered to take one home.
Elsewhere it is said that observers of a riot will be deemed to be just as
guilty as those participating in it. Journalists everywhere must be in danger and
what about those living in a riot struck street who happen
to look out of their window at the wrong time?
The EV charger installation job has been deferred until tomorrow.