In the Media

Police officers to march on London | Sandra Laville

PUBLISHED May 9, 2012
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Up to 20,000 rank and file police officers will march in London on Thursday in a protest at the cuts and "privatisation" of the service.

The demonstration is the strongest show of defiance available to members of the Police Federation and comes as the call from some officers for full industrial rights grows. The more radical amongst them believe if they are to lose the job protection they have always had as Crown servants, then they need real industrial muscle to defend their jobs and their working conditions.

The sight of tens of thousands of cops taking to the streets is unusual, and the presence in their midst of a chief constable - Tony Melville - even more so. It is a measure of their anger that police officers - conservatives by nature - feel they have been pushed this far.

Whether their action will change anything is unclear. But with a £500 million shortfall in the 20 percent cuts required by forces still to be filled, the squeeze on the service in England and Wales is only getting tighter.

The off duty marchers will wear 16,000 black caps to show the number of officers the public will lose over the next four years and will march in silence past the memorial to fallen officers on The Mall.

The last time police officers marched was 2008 - this time the federation has been able to spread the word via the social networking site Twitter, medium of radicals and demonstrators countrywide.

Early analysis of the public messages on such social networking sites, however, suggests the constables, sergeants and inspectors taking to the streets will do so peacefully, without the need for Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe to resort to kettling, mass arrests or water canon.

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