In circumstances where a man’s assault and death were played out on our television sets, the obstacles faced by the Tomlinson family in their battle for justice undermine public confidence in the system intended to hold police officers to account. Had Tomlinson’s assault been carried out by an ordinary member of the public, there is no doubt that the police would have acted within the six-month statutory time limit for common assault and pursued a manslaughter charge in the knowledge that any conflict in the expert evidence obtained by the investigation would be tested in court. A verdict would then have been reached by a jury, which would have considered the credibility of the experts’ explanations, bearing in mind the professional reputations of the experts. This is exactly what happened at the inquest, where the standard of proof for an unlawful killing verdict was the same as in the criminal court.

This case highlights a number of the failures that are unfortunately so common in the context of our work. These include: failures to adequately supervise and manage officers and to conduct adequate, effective and independent complaint investigations that give rise to disciplinary proceedings, as well as failures to bring about prosecutions and/or appropriate penalties and/or to change police policy or practice to prevent a recurrence of the conduct investigated. These failures foster a culture of impunity amongst officers and allow culpable officers to remain in a position to inflict further harm on unsuspecting members of the public. The Crown Prosecution Service will now review its decision with regard to a potential prosecution of the officer involved, PC Harwood; MPs are considering disciplinary proceedings. But what of those who, in breach of their code of professional standards, witnessed but failed to report Harwood’s conduct? Disciplinary action should be instigated against those officers too, given that had the video footage of his last moments not been released, the cause of Tomlinson’s death may have never come to light.

Finally, this case gives rise to serious questions about the use of kettling as a “containment” tactic. Indeed, last month the High Court ruled that the Metropolitan Police broke the law when they kettled protesters at the G20 demonstrations in 2009, during which Ian Tomlinson died. It is clear that the use of kettles enforced by aggressive policing places members of the public at risk of significant harm. We represent Alfie Meadows, who suffered brain injury as the result of a baton strike to the head by a police officer during the 9 December 2010 protest about tuition fees. Luckily for Alfie, he is able to pursue his own quest for justice. Tomlinson was not so fortunate and his family have been forced to take up that struggle on his behalf. Let’s hope their campaign is nearing its rightful conclusion.

Sarah McSherry is equity partner, head of actions against the police, Christian Khan Solicitors and Louise Christian is head of public law, Christian Khan Solicitors

As Hannah McClure and I celebrated our legal victory over the Metropolitan police we simultaneously struggled with the media’s emphasis on possible compensation claims. Our goal in bringing the case against the Met was not damages. In fact, the idea that serious infringements of protest rights can be properly compensated for with money is pretty offensive. People protest to draw attention to what must change for the benefit of everyone in society. Making a police force’s insurance company hand over money to protestors whose rights have been compromised changes very little.

Our goal was to bring the police to account. While the police have a long history of violence against protestors such as Blair Peach back in the 1970s, I found it distressing how they were able to detain thousands of climate change protestors and passers-by for five hours and then make orders that force could be used to compress the protest into a much smaller space and ultimately end it. Much of the force used, especially the use of shields as weapons, was filmed and is disturbing to watch even two years on. The court certainly thought so and was highly critical of shield strikes. The fact that senior police officers could make these decisions and hand down such orders without being reprimanded was, to me, obscene. This “over-zealous” approach can be seen in the current Ian Tomlinson inquest.

In response to the question “Does your training tell you if someone is not a threat to you or any other person it is acceptable to baton them? Is that your training?” PC Harwood, the officer who struck Tomlinson before he died, replied “Yes.” This kind of unaccountability had to be challenged. Kettling, a tactic that has become so much part of the everyday protest experience, similarly had to be challenged.

Our case was not simply about the G20 camp. It was about protest in the UK as a whole. The police should not be able to treat climate change protestors, or anyone else, however they wish and get away with it. However, Sir Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), seems to think otherwise. In early 2011, after previously claiming that the Met had learnt its lessons after the G20 Climate Camp protest, Orde stated that the police could use more extreme tactics against protestors. He defended kettling and claimed that horse charges could be “very useful”. This was in response to the wave of protests that gripped the country following the savage cuts by the Con-Dem coalition.

In the course of these protests there were multiple examples of unreasonable uses of police force, accompanied by an apparent belief on the part of the police in their own immunity. In December 2010, Jodi McIntyre, a cerebral palsy sufferer, was dragged from his wheelchair by police officers on two occasions.  An officer justified having done so, claiming that it was “for [Jody's] own safety”. The previous month had seen tuition fee protestors, as well as children and pregnant women, charged by police on horseback. Despite the Met’s claims to the contrary, a video was posted on Youtube clearly verifying that the crowd had been charged.

After the Kingsnorth Climate Camp in 2009, ministers claimed that 70 police had sustained injuries at the hands of protestors and used this evidence to justify the operation. It later emerged from police records that the injuries comprised sun stroke, bee stings and  hands slammed in car doors. In reality, four police officers were injured through contact with climate change protestors, categorised at the lowest level of seriousness. Subsequently, parts of the police operation at Kingsnorth were found by the courts to have been unlawful.

During protests, police do not and will not act in the interests of the people. They are there to maintain the status quo. To do this, the police will use and manipulate any power they are given to its very limits. The police may claim to have “learnt their lesson”, but such statements are undermined by the fact that they have already decided to appeal this most recent judgment. The police learn their lessons not out of choice, but because they are forced to do so. This is why I was part of the team which took out this case against them.

Josh Moos is an activist and campaigner for Plane Stupid

Asserting their right to free movement, the crowd surged up Victoria which was blocked by a line of riot and mounted police. Within a few minutes, I found myself at the front line.

“Get back, get back,” shouted a six-foot copper, his truncheon raised. Now with the crowd pressing up behind me, attempting to break the line, there was nowhere to go. The officer’s baton then glanced the side of my face, knocking off my glasses and catching my left eye. I caught my glasses before they dropped to the floor and then prepared for a second strike. This time, I held the officer’s baton for a few seconds as it came down on me.

It was a natural response — I was defending myself against assault. However, an officer trying to keep order is a licensed professional in a unique position: they are permitted to strike out — within reason — to keep the peace and hold their line. For the officer, protecting myself by placing a hand around his baton, even for a moment, riled him up no end; I was stopping him from doing his job. The third strike caught the top of my head. The blood began to pour.

The narrative of who started what and when, and the blame game of who is responsible for violence — protesters or the police — is most always chewed over by people who don’t actually go to demonstrations where there is a threat of public disorder. As someone who has attended dozens of violent protests over the last ten years, including all four major student demos since 10 November, I can say that most trouble starts when protesters try to move in a direction — up a street or down an alley — which police commanders have decided they must be barred from.

Thursday’s events left hundreds of students and police injured. It was pure chance that no one died.

It’s worth asking a counter factual question. What would have happened if the police hadn’t been there, stacked line-by-line near Parliament? The answer, I believe, is that the students would have entered the House of Commons and occupied it. And it is entirely possible that it would have been 99 per cent peaceful, rather like the countrywide protests of 30 November or the dozens of other student occupations around the country. Ultimately, the police were there to protect the Palace of Westminster from a very unpopular decision being taken against people who couldn’t vote at the last election or felt rightly betrayed by the party they did vote for. And the easiest way you can stop thousands of people from occupying a building is to beat them back or charge at them with horses. Protesters will obviously fight back and use violence in turn.

One protester here sums this up: “A feeling of desperation always leads to severe consequences. The problem is the government are not supposed to allow it to go that far. They have, they’ve pushed their luck and now they are happy to hide behind the police, who aren’t our enemy, yet they’re the ones who get the stick for it. They brutalise us, we fight back, but it deters from the fact that the enemy is in there,” he says pointing towards the Palace of Westminster.

The police know this too. Asked if repeated clashes with students could damage the police’s reputation, Association of Chief Police Officer president Sir Hugh Orde said, “Yes, if it is allowed to be played as the cops acting as an arm of the state, delivering the elected government’s will, rather than protecting the rights of the citizen.”

He added “the predictable consequence” of the anti-cuts demos were that “the police become the focus of people’s anger. Any time citizens in uniform comes up against the citizen, relationships suffer.”

Orde is absolutely right, we are all citizens. So ultimately it is those politicians who cower behind the uniforms and resources of some of those citizens, who are responsible for the violence. And they should only carry on if they have the stomach for more blood.

Shiv Malik is a journalist and co-author of Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth

At no stage has any of this gone in front of court. The decision to take the website down was taken entirely by the police, with the agreement of the hosting company, which seems to have put up little argument. The ease by which the police can shut down any website they don’t like the look of doesn’t sit well with our supposed freedom of speech.

The Metropolitan police, especially the Public Order Unit (CO11) of the Metropolitan police, has reason not to like Fitwatch. Fitwatch was set up three years ago to monitor the behaviour of police Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT), specialist police units run by CO11 that photograph, film and gather “intelligence” on political protesters. Fitwatch has been a thorn in their side ever since. Its campaigning has forced changes to their operational procedures and exposed in the press the routine collection and retention by police of protesters personal details — information the police would rather have kept to themselves.

Fitwatch had also been supportive of student actions in occupying Tory headquarters Millbank last week. In the midst of a witch-hunting frenzy by the right wing press, including the Telegraph’s rogues gallery of “rioting” students, Fitwatch had urged protesters not to panic into handing themselves in. It also suggested other tactics that may help get students out of trouble — including getting rid of “dodgy” items such as clothes and distinctive jewellery worn on the day.

The Met’s Public Order Unit then contacted the web host and alleged that the site had been used to give “explicit advice” to “offenders” that amounted to an attempt to pervert the course of justice. They made no attempt to contact the website’s authors, nor did they ask the host to remove the offending article. They requested that the domain being used should be suspended for a minimum of twelve months.

If the aim of this draconian decision was to stop people reading this “explicit advice”, the Met has failed spectacularly. The strength of the web is that it continues to resist attempts to control it. In response to police censorship the internet community sprang into supportive action. Dozens of other sites and blogs instantly uploaded the offending page onto theirs, as links multiplied. The material the police wanted to repress has surfaced to reach thousands more than it would have done if the police had left it alone — especially after it got coverage in the Guardian.

If the aim was a more general one, to disrupt and deter “anti-police” websites, this also seems to have backfired. If anything, the action has only exposed the depth of support for the sentiments Fitwatch expressed. Fitwatch is resolutely undeterred, and is working on getting the website up and running again, albeit on a different domain.

The effect on freedom of expression may not be immediately apparent. While Fitwatch may dig its heels in, others will start to worry about the wisdom of publishing contentious information. And while dozens may rally round to resist police censorship, dozens more may become that little bit more cautious about what they post. Nobody wants to have their website taken down, or be accused of criminal activity. If we value freedom of expression, we should not tolerate the police deciding what websites we should, or shouldn’t be allowed to read.

Val Swain is a FITwatch activist

The legal opinion

• Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (our equivalent of the US 1st Amendment) provides the right to freedom of expression, subject to certain restrictions described in Article 10(2). However, any state interference must be “in accordance with law” and “necessary in a democratic society”… “for the prevention of disorder or crime”.

• This fundamental right includes the freedom to hold opinions, and to receive and impart information and ideas even if those are unpopular with the police. Whilst some of the comments in this particular Fitwatch posting might potentially have been classed as obstructing a police investigation (which comes under the common law criminal offence of ‘perverting the course of justice’), under the Human Rights Act 1998 the police, as a public body, may only interfere with freedom of speech so far as is necessary and proportionate to the aim being pursued. Asking the host to remove the whole website (rather than the offending post) for an entire year would potentially amount to an unlawful, disproportionate interference with the Article 10 right.

• One can think of countless examples of sites where information is given on how to engage in legally dubious conduct but avoid being convicted of a crime – eg. pro-fox hunting sites, hunt saboteur sites, S&M legal advice sites etc. Are the police to shut down all such sites? Given the speed at which new sites are generated, it would be futile, whatever about being potentially amenable to challenge by judicial review. The police would be wise to follow the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights 2009 report “Demonstrating Respect for Rights? – Follow Up” published post-G20. They said: “Human rights based policing should help to improve public trust in the police.” Attempts at censorship seem to be no more than a knee-jerk reaction, which may ultimately dissuade the peaceful majority of student protesters from assisting the police.

Gwendolen Morgan is a solicitor in public law and human rights at Bindmans LLP