Having been castigated for failing to uphold the right to peaceful protest at the G20 demonstrations, it seems the Met has learnt nothing, except that if you arrest people and take them to the police station there's a lot of paperwork and solicitors, whereas if you simply kettle people in a small area on a bridge you don't have to bother with any due process of law, provision of basic facilities, paperwork or bothersome solicitors and legal rights.

But then presumably the kettled protesters were particularly virulent and violent - the authors of this letter are

Rhodes professor of imperial history, Kings College London
Reader in international relations, University of Cambridge
Professor of history and public policy, University of Cambridge

How's that? Not violent protesters?  Surely the Met didn't make a mistake? Surely they ensured full compliance with the law

Letters: No explanation was offered for what amounted to mass internment, in very dangerous circumstances, of a crowd of demonstrators

Tuition fee protest and human rights

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  • The Guardian, Tuesday 14 December 2010
  • Article history

With students from Cambridge and King's College London, we entered Parliament Square on 9 December en route to a planned protest vigil against the education bill (Report, 13 December). Once in we found we could not get out. We saw police use batons on people who had done nothing aggressive, charge groups with horses when there was no escape route, and detain thousands of people – including minors – without food, water, adequate heat or sanitation for hours.

This "kettling" cannot have been a response to criminal activity, as the police have claimed, since it began early in the day, and was clearly a tactic planned well in advance. If so, it was dramatically counterproductive: at 5.30pm, after the vote, most of the crowd might have dissipated, but instead were forced to remain. Only then did the level of violence escalate dramatically. When one of us suggested to the police that they intervene to check a drift towards malicious damage when some youths started to break windows, this was ignored and allowed to develop into a significant problem. The police authorities at no point attempted to explain what was happening, or what they wished us to do until, somewhat after 8.30pm, they drove us with batons and shields into a tight mass on Westminster Bridge, where we continued to be detained for a further two hours.

No explanation was offered for what amounted to mass internment, in very dangerous circumstances, of a crowd of demonstrators. The government and the police must consider the consequences of blocking legitimate forms of political expression. Last week's bad education law goes against the spirit of article 32 of the universal declaration of human rights, which urged free education "directed to the full development of the human personality"; does this government also intend to abrogate articles 9 and 20, with their protection against arbitrary detention and guarantee of free assembly?

Richard Drayton Rhodes professor of imperial history, Kings College London

Charles Jones Reader in international relations, University of Cambridge

Simon Szreter Professor of history and public policy, University of Cambridge