A guest post
When they let me out I was too polite, I said ‘night night’ to the duty skipper and then instantly regretted it. Once I got out of the yard S, L, M and some people from Green and Black Cross were waiting for anyone who was coming out and started cheering. At half past three in the morning that means something. They all headed up north and I trotted up to the bus stop. Sitting down, realising that the next bus wasn’t coming for at least another 50 minutes, one of the Made in Chelsea knock-offs that were piling out of the Brasseries guffawed at me; “you know your flies are undone don’t you”. I tried to give him a withering look, I wanted to show him my bail sheet, but he was too fucked to keep up the jibe. Rather than waiting, I started running home.
My flies weren’t undone: my trousers were just completely shorn of buttons, they had holes on the knees where I’d been dragged along the ground. My shirt was ripped apart completely. One of the ways I tried to kill time in the cell was by fashioning a belt from the shredded remains of my shirt. When the Met’s Tactical Support Group officers were ordered to lift people they were impressively efficient. I just remember them pointing at me and then grabbing. They were so determined to get me that they ripped every piece of material on me, my bag, my trousers, my shirt and, when they were walking me away back behind the police lines, journalists were just taking pictures of me with my chest out and my trousers trailing around my ankles. I asked them ‘Is that really necessary?’. I should have told them to fuck themselves.
It was a stupid way to run. My shoes had no laces. They had been taken out in case I decided to strangle myself. I could hear them wheezing and flopping. My clothes were held together by knots and I couldn’t wear my bag because the straps had been torn off, so I had to switch it from hand to hand and pump the alternate arm. But it felt wonderful.
In spite of the exhaustion, where I’d tried to sleep only to wake up again on the plastic mat covered in sweat, the halogen still on and still sneering, in spite of that I was just able to run. It definitely wasn’t my best pace, and I could feel that my bones were suffering from what my muscles were refusing to do as I clodhopped up through Wandsworth towards Clapham Common. The difference between this run and all of my best runs was that I had forced myself to run well in the past. Now I was running because I was compelled to, because I wanted to be as far as possible from Battersea police station, because I could. I’d spent those nine hours pacing, estimating the dimensions of the cell, practising handstands, looking up at the grated window and trying not to be melodramatic. I ran the four miles home, across South London and enjoyed every moment.
Not once, in the whole process, did I panicked. When your face is being ground in the tarmac and your hands are being cable-tied together behind your back you quite quickly recognise that there’s little you can do. Either that or I’m just a pushover. I was only really concerned that my partner would be mad with me that I had ruined our holiday plans. She wasn’t, for the record.
What happened between 3 and half 4 that afternoon was incredibly confusing. When I got back, when the sun was rising, my partner woke up and reminded me we’d won, because the BNP couldn’t march. It was of course far better than Monday, but it didn’t feel like we’d won. It felt like we’d been punished. We held the line because we were led to believe that was what was necessary to stop them passing. I hope it was. I think to some extent we had the easier target, we didn’t have the EDL. We need to remember that when the police pulls a fascist attempt to march before it ends, its because they realise that they can’t police it if the community tries to drive them back. If they move it from outer to central London, its because they want to ensure that they can control the situation and disarm resistance with greater ease. Its their turf. We can’t get away with the things we got away with in Tower Hamlets and Walthamstow. Ironically the first time I was arrested was on the second demonstration I ever went to, and it was less than fifty metres away from where I got arrested on Saturday, when the EDL marched on parliament in solidarity with Geert Wilders.
I can’t pretend that a night in a holding cell is anything like custodial sentence. But you can feel the things that become the themes of prison films start to show themselves. The loneliness and the boredom, the sensory deprivation, then mistaking the people who check on you and who bring you water for anything other than screws. So when I was running, I didn’t feel miserable, I felt rejuvenated. I ran past cul-de-sacs in backstreet Wandsworth that looked like the art deco suburbs from Hollywood’s boom. I ran down Clapham High Street. I ran past bus stops of people going in for early morning cleaning shifts in central London. The run wasn’t my best time, it wasn’t particularly fast or the longest distance. But it was my best run.
The author is among 58 anti-fascists who were arrested at Whitehall on 1st June
lives; running 
“I can’t pretend that a night in a holding cell is anything like custodial sentence.”
But as they say in the wire you only do two days – the day you go in and the day you come out. you did two days comrade and wrote a fine account from it.
the question in the middle about bnp and edl is important – were they ever going to march together? luckily nothing kicked off back in lewisham or woolwich from the edl
I just love this. This article should be everywhere. It evokes such a familiar, painful and exhilarating memory for anyone who has been on an anti fascist demo.
This piece was by Soren Goard, one of the anti-fascist five, who was cleared today of public order offences at Westminster Magistrates Court: well done Soren and all the comrades!