Pictures & Video - Peterborough Protests

11 December 2010, 14:31 | Updated: 13 December 2010, 12:40

The English Defence League and Trade Union Council held protests in Peterborough on Saturday.

TUC

Members of the TUC gathered in the Bishop's Road car park from around 10:30am, before marching along Rivergate forty minutes later.

Peterborough City Council estimate there were around 130 people taking part in the TUC protest.

They then made their way into the Key Theatre car park for speeches and music.

This protest ended at just before 4pm.

EDL

The English Defence League met in a car park next to the Peterborough United FC ground at around 11:30am.

Peterborough City Council estimate that around 500 people then marched along Lower Bridge Street, before assembling for music and speeches outside the Magistrate's Court.

The English Defence League protest ended at around 3:15pm.

Policing

Around 1,000 officers from 17 police forces took part in the policing of the demonstrations.

A total of eleven people were arrested during the day's demonstrations.

Two of those arrests were on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon, two were for assaulting a police officer and two were on suspicion of affray.

A further five men were arrested at Peterborough Railway Station on suspicion of public order offences.

Heart's Katie Burnett speaks to Supt. Paul Fullwood.

Superintendent Paul Fullwood said: "Peterborough stood firm and the city should be proud of the way it has responded to today’s events.

There were some issues of disorder dealt with promptly and professionally to achieve a peaceful outcome.

Some arrests have been made, but both protests have been generally peaceful.

Effective planning for the event has been positively implemented and we need to ensure Peterborough goes forward positively from this event.

Today’s joint operation has enabled the community to go about business as usual. Some people chose to stay away, but we did all we could to make the city a safe place to be for the public, businesses and protesters."

Peterborough City Council’s chief executive Gillian Beasley said: "We have been working very closely with our communities, businesses, police and partner organisations over the past few weeks to allay any concerns and reassure the community.

Today we had 40 youth workers out in our neighbourhoods talking to our young people and we would like to thank our youth in the city for behaving so maturely and responsibly and not reacting to the protests.

I was very impressed with the police operation that enabled both protests to pass peacefully and business as usual to continue.

We had teams working with the police to ensure our temporary road closures were removed as soon as it was safe to do so to allow our city to return to normal.

Our call centre staff were able to reassure and provide information to 30 people who rang in on the day, and only 11 of those calls were directly related to the protests."