Police ‘must take back streets’ for Trump visit
Officers warned not to repeat ‘soft’ climate change policing as president faces renewed protest chaos
Police have been told they must take back control of the streets for Donald Trump’s State visit in June after surrendering to climate change protesters last week. MPS and a former Met Police commissioner said there must be no repeat of the softly-softly approach that allowed Extinction Rebellion activists to shut down parts of London at will. Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that Mr Trump and his wife Melania would be coming for a State visit from June 3-5.
POLICE have been told they must take back control of the streets for President Donald Trump’s State visit in June after surrendering to climate change protesters last week.
MPS and a former Met Police commissioner said there must be no repeat of the softly-softly approach that allowed Extinction Rebellion activists to shut down parts of London at will.
Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that Mr Trump and his wife Mel- ania would make a State visit from June 3-5, two and a half years after they were first invited by Theresa May.
His visit will include a State banquet hosted by the Queen in Buckingham Palace, a meeting with Mrs May in Downing Street and a D-day 75th anniversary event in Portsmouth, but the US president and his considerable entourage will not be able to stay at the Palace, which is being renovated.
Government sources said he would not be given an open-top carriage ride down the Mall with the Queen because of security concerns, even though Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, were granted the honour.
Mrs May said the visit was a chance for Britain and the US “to strengthen our already close relationship”, while the White House said it would “reaffirm the steadfast and special relationship” between the two nations.
Labour condemned the visit, with Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, saying the president had “systematically assaulted all the shared values that unite our two countries”.
The visit is expected to attract up to a million protesters, which will require one of the biggest policing operations undertaken in the capital.
Within hours of the visit being announced, more than 10,000 people had declared their intention online to take part in protests organised by environmental, anti-capitalist, anti-nuclear and other campaign groups.
Many will have been emboldened by the success of last week’s climate change protests that shut down parts of London including Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge and Oxford Circus.
Lord Stevens, the former Met commissioner who was critical of the police response to the protests, said: “The tactics will need to be different. They will have to block streets off because the security implications are not to be underestimated... Remember we are in the middle of a high-level terrorist alert. It is about public safety and ... national prestige to a certain extent.”
Douglas Ross, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said “lessons will be learnt” from Mr Trump’s previous visit to the UK, when a paraglider trailing an anti-trump banner flew just feet from his Scottish golf course while he was there.
Michael Chessum, an organiser from the Stop Trump coalition, said: “We expect a huge amount of creative, disruptive, mass-scale protests and there will be a million people doing a million different things.
“Look at what we have at the moment with Extinction Rebellion, children missing school to protest over climate change, anti-brexit protests. It is going to be massive. The protests will be chaotic and they will be huge.”
John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, signalled that he had not changed his mind over his previous refusal to allow the president to address both Houses of Parliament, as his spokesman said any request “would be considered in the usual way”. It triggered a row with Lord Fowler, the Lords Speaker, who said there was a “strong case” for Mr Trump to address Parliament.
‘We expect a huge amount of creative, disruptive, mass-scale protests... The protests will be chaotic and they will be huge’