There would have been more but my camera battery went flat! I had been taking scores of photographs of the main march before returning to Albert Square. At 3pm there were between 120 and 150 people, with more trickling in. There was a sound system playing and some people were still hanging banners from lamp posts. About 20 coppers were standing round the edge of the square. An hour earlier ten riot cops had crammed into the entrance of the town hall but they had gone by three. They must have figured that the activists were not planning to storm the town hall.
There were too few people at this point to be able to hold the square if the cops had decided to clear it, so I spoke to one copper to try to get a feel for what they might be planning. She seemed to genuinely not know much about the occupation, including that it was an occupation and not a fringe protest to the main march. Her attitude was "They have a right to protest, if it's peaceful they can stay as long as they like." However, the fuzz might have been taking a relaxed attitude because the occupation was small and unthreatening. Whether this attitude continues if numbers increase and people start pitching tents remains to be seen.
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