As Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin made its way to London from Scotland, anti-monarchy Britons are protesting after several arrests along the way, as seen in this video posted on September 13 by the British newspaper The Guardian.
Several people gathered”peacefullyoutside the Houses of Parliament, holding up anti-monarchy signs. One of them explains that she was intimidated the day before by the police: “Four police officers stood around me, they demanded to see my sign, what was behind it. They wanted to know my intentions, to know why I was there.” Another activist present in the video explained on Twitter that he had to respond to police officers while holding an all-white sign.
Elsewhere in the UK, several people have been arrested after demonstrating their hostility to the monarchy. In Scotland, a 22-year-old woman was arrested for holding up a sign that read: “Fuck imperialism! Abolish the monarchy!” “She has been charged under a 2010 conduct law ‘likely to arouse concern or fear in reasonable persons’ and will appear at Edinburgh High Court on September 30,” reports the British newspaper The Independent.
A man in Oxford was also arrested after shouting “Who elected him?” when Charles III was officially proclaimed king. The Independent emphasizes, however, that “Other republican protesters carrying placards at the proclamation ceremony were not arrested, including a man who held up a ‘republic’ banner in Edinburgh and women who carried a square of cloth with the inscriptions ‘not our king ‘ and ‘colonial subjugation of the Welsh people’ outside Cardiff Castle on Sunday”.
The British daily The Times relays the concerns of Naomi McAuliffe, Scottish Director of Amnesty International UK: “It is extremely important that at all times – even in times of national mourning – freedom of expression and the right to protest are respected.”
On the Irish side, the daily nationalarch Irish Independent splits a nuanced editorial on the queen, but turned against the police: “In fact, it can be said with good reason that the police have already betrayed the memory of Elizabeth – because after all, here is a country where they would have us believe that freedom of expression, the right of assembly and the right to demonstrate are sacrosanct.”