Occupy Liverpool’s shop protest turns ugly - video

Occupy’s Liverpool contingent was quiet for a while - from their St George’s Hall camp they moved to outside the Walker Gallery, and they’re freshly positioned in a disused office block on Dale Street.

But a peaceful demonstration on Church Street, also this weekend, and designed to highlight tax dodgers like TopShop, Vodafone and Boots, turned violent. And it sounded particularly ugly thanks to the reactions of security guards on shift. One video, above, suggest security were heavy handed in a bid to turf out the protestors, and bystanders got in the way.

The anonymous videomaker says: “Witnesses saw security guards punch a pregnant protester and burn a lit cigarette into one protesters face, along with countless other acts of criminal assault. On arrival, the police arrested 4 of the peaceful protesters and 1 security guard.

Personally, I had nothing to do with the protests and was simply present to document the event, however, I was unjustifiably forced into an ally way by 4 security guards and pushed to the floor, whilst demonstrating my right to film in a public place. I was also called a “fucking peado” and had my photo taken by 2 security guards who told me “we’ll fucking get you”".

One commenter was in Boots during the protest: “A big crowd of people led by a guy with a microphone charged into Boots. The security guard was totally outnumbered and did a good job of pushing everyone out of the shop. A woman got caught up in it all and the crowd jumped at the opportunity to shout “shame on you” at this guy doing his job. It was completely contradictory as there would have been no physical threat if they hadn’t all charged in for no good reason.”

As ever with incidents like this, there’s various - and varying - eyewitness accounts that shed different light on the situation. From what we’ve read from various sites, it sounds like the Occupy protesters’ unannounced entrance led to a spooked security staff, who probably don’t understand (and aren’t trained) how to deal with incidents any heavier than the occasional scally shoplifter, and things escalated unnecessarily into violence. As you can see from yourself from the video, the nasty outcome to all this wasn’t quite as peaceful as it should’ve been.

- Thanks to @Feverzine for the video tipoff.