[DanaC]

Yah. They were. I was there. In the horse charge, I was dragged out of the way by my boyfriend. It was horrible, very scary. A friend of ours was chinned by a cop (she was only 17, looked about 15). We were at the barrier to Downing Street at the time. That was what sparked the violence at that part of the march, the crowd saw this cop floor a young lass and it erupted.

At one point, Judah and I were trying to get to the 'front lines' running up the side of the march, along a verge. There were people coming back from the line with bloodied faces and heads and some people lay on the grass being tended by medics.

We got to the front. A large demo that turns violent is a very strange place to be. There's a push and pull between the two sides that seems almost organic.

It was the same with the big anti-nazi rally after the Isle of Dogs BNP victory. Huge march, lot of people: police used similar tactics as the ones they used in the poll tax demo, they tried to split the march by driving dogs, horses and riot cops between different sections of the march, then when a section was boxed in they'd charge. When you are stood there in the crush of people and they surge forward at you, the whole crowd surges back, they try to grab or hit the people atthe front.....then there's a reaction and the crowd surges back forward again and tries to grab or hit one of them.

We got one of the bastards off his horse at least. It was small comfort given the amount of people who got hurt.

Thing is, every demo I've been on has descended into violence and rioting; and every single time it's been the police who started it, yet every time I have come home to find the press full of 'the poor police' sentiment.

Incidentally, the reason I had to be dragged out of the way of a charging horse, was that I'd tripped over a toddler who had become separated from her parents and was crawling about on the floor. The march had gone from a fairly relaxed family march on a sunny day, with people playing on pipes and drums and kids on parents shoulders and old people with zimmer frames ("Pensioners Against the Poll Tax), to a bloody battle.

Funny thing is, during the initial stages of the march, we were going past lines of police who were cheerful and civilised, then as we marched along, we began to notice that the police were a) much less friendly looking and b)not wearing any numbers on their shoulders. That's about when things started to get nasty.

We found out later that the army were on standby with rubber bullets and orders to fire into the thickest part of the crowd if we breached Downing Street.

I was 18 and it was a hell of a political awakening.