Thousand marched under a heavy police presence through central London in protest against lockdown on Saturday, with officers leading small numbers of people away in handcuffs.<\/p>\n
Demonstrators gathered at Speakers\u2019 Corner by Hyde Park at about midday, where the anti-lockdown figurehead Piers Corbyn gave a speech saying he would \u201cnever take a vaccine\u201d and falsely claiming that the scale of deaths from Covid was not dissimilar to those from flu each year.<\/p>\n
As police surrounded him and detained a number of people as they ordered demonstrators to disperse, the crowd then marched out of the park and through London from Marble Arch.<\/p>\n
The march came as 62 MPs and peers wrote to the home secretary on Friday saying that allowing the police to criminalise people for protesting was \u201cnot acceptable and is arguably not lawful\u201d, in a letter coordinated by Liberty and Big Brother Watch.<\/p>\n
They said the right to protest was enshrined in human rights law, amid growing scrutiny of police tactics after officers forcibly dispersed demonstrators at a vigil for Sarah Everard last week.<\/p>\n
The specific exemption to coronavirus regulations in England allowing the right to protest was removed in November, but some legal experts have said it remains a \u201creasonable excuse\u201d for leaving home. It is widely accepted that transmission of coronavirus is far less likely outdoors.<\/p>\n
At Saturday\u2019s demonstration, police appeared to apprehend relatively small numbers of people by 2pm as a helicopter hovered above.<\/p>\n
Other protests were expected to take place elsewhere in the UK.<\/p>\n
Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n SO SAD: this Govt\u2019s authoritarian, anti democratic action mean huge numbers now breaking the law in cause of freedom to protest, freedom from unjustified continuation of lockdown, freedom itself. Dangerous territory. (I am at home forwarding this video). pic.twitter.com\/ileb0BpDDd<\/a><\/p>\n — Richard Tice (@TiceRichard) March 20, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n