At about 4pm, the riot police closed in, blocking exits from Parliament Square. After a heart-catching winter sunset, temperatures plummeted towards freezing and Dan Hancox was not alone in wanting to go home. The police had other ideas. “With their black snoods up and their thick plastic visors down,” he recalls, “the postmodern storm troopers of the Metropolitan police’s Territorial Support Group were unrelenting and unmoved.”
Hancox, a white middle-class thirtysomething journalist, was about to be taught a life lesson. It’s one the less privileged people learn earlier. When the police come, they’re not necessarily there to help – at least not to help you.
