King’s coronation: Protester holding megaphone arrested as police say he could ‘scare horses’
Antimonarchy protesters booed the moment King Charles III was crowned in Westminster Abbey, before launching into a chant of “not my king”.
It comes after a man with an unused megaphone has been arrested in St James’s Park, with police claiming it could “scare the horses”.
Police were seen surrounding a handcuffed anti-monarchy protester at the park in London, with Sky’s Jason Farrell reporting that an officer said he “was in a crowd of monarchists and [the megaphone] could cause them distress”.
It was the latest in a series of arrests in the hours leading up to the King’s coronation, with several human rights organisations accusing officers of being heavy-handed in their approach.
Sky News reporters on the ground say more than a dozen have been arrested – and the Metropolitan Police have confirmed seven arrests so far.
A van contained protest material that has now been confiscated. Pic: Twitter – @Labour4Republic
Among those detained are the leader of anti-monarchy group Republic, who was led away in a police van just after 7am as he made his way to a designated protest site, and Just Stop Oil protesters who were arrested on the Mall near Buckingham Palace a short while later over their plans to go over the barrier.
But Just Stop Oil claims they 20 members have been arrested merely for “wearing t-shirts and dispute claims they had planned to jump he barrier.
Read more:
Meet the coronation protesters
A member of the Not My King protest was arrested at St James’s Park
‘Dystopian nightmare’
Footage on Twitter shows a police officer taking the details of Republic CEO Graham Smith.
In the video, one officer can be heard saying: “They are under arrest, end of.”
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Watch as Charles is crowned King
Scotland Yard said four people have been arrested on “suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance”, after they were found with lock-on devices. A further three people were arrested at Wellington Arch and are being “held on suspicion of possessing articles to cause criminal damage”.
A spokeswoman for Just Stop Oil said five demonstrators were also arrested at Downing Street.
Pic: Twitter – @Labour4Republic
Just Stop Oil arrests on The Mall
She said the group’s plan was “only to display T-shirts and flags”, adding: “This is a dystopian nightmare.”
Onlookers to the arrests at The Mall sang the national anthem as the demonstrators shouted messages about climate change and the right to protest.
Some people approached protesters who were wearing handcuffs and told them to “shut up”, while others heckled the group and laughed at them.
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Anti-monarchy protesters arrested
‘Worrying’ use of new powers
Republic activist Luke Whiting, 26, said the group was arrested as they tried to bring yellow placards to a protest, and questioned if it was because “one of them was carrying a megaphone”.
He told Sky News: “We were very open with police about what we planned to do, which is hold a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
“It seems [the protesters] have been arrested using this new powers. It’s quite a worrying thing to happen, we were pretty shocked.”
He said the group has been “open” with the police about what they had planned.
“They’ve said it’s perfectly legal for us to bring placards, bring flags and protest the coronation,” he added. “In a democratic society it is absolutely our right to do this and be peaceful and that’s what we are planning to do.”
‘Incredibly alarming’
Non-profit campaign group Human Rights Watch said the “incredibly alarming” arrests were “something you would expect to see in Moscow, not London”.
Its UK director Yasmine Ahmed said in a statement: “Peaceful protests allow individuals to hold those in power to account, something the UK government seems increasingly averse to.”
On Wednesday, the Met announced it would have an “extremely low threshold” for protests during the coronation, and demonstrators could expect “swift action”.
The policing operation is set to see 11,500 police officers on duty on Saturday.
Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, said the human rights group was concerned about the force’s statements about its “low tolerance” for protests ahead of the arrests.
He said: “We need to see what details emerge around these incidents, but merely being in possession of a megaphone or carrying placards should never be grounds for a police arrest.”
Protesters have been taken away in police vans
Police ‘found evidence of locking on’
One woman in a Republic T-shirt who was arrested said the group had been questioned about how they got through road closures.
“We had a delivery of placards ready for the protest, and then the tactical support unit questioned us as to how we had got through the road closures,” she said.
“They questioned whether what we were doing was a delivery. They then said they found evidence of means of locking on, of items that could be used to lock on, and they arrested us.”
Officers carried her away from where she had been standing outside a Tesco store, while two men who appeared to have been part of the same demonstration were carried away by officers into a marked police van.
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Watch anti-monarchy protests
Why protesters have taken to the streets
Campaigners from two anti-monarchy groups have been speaking to Sky News this morning, ahead of the coronation ceremony, about why they have taken to the streets.
“I don’t believe that power should pass from one nepotism baby to the next,” said Imogen McBeath from No More Royals.
“There is no qualification that they have that means they have a divine right to rule.”
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Meet the coronation protesters gathering in central London ahead of the King’s coronation
When questioned about the King’s attempts to slim down the monarchy, she replied: “If they wanted to make an effort, they would recognise where their wealth comes from – which is colonisation.
“They would give back jewels and artefacts that they have stolen.”
Luke Whiting from Republic added: “It’s an incredibly expensive coronation process, up to a quarter of a billion pounds in the middle of a cost of living crisis. I think people have really been shocked by that.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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