Thousands of police officers march over pay (re-done for word count)

Joseph Borawski, Friday January 25^th 2008, 2:42 AM, Global Social Protests Current Event

The next story I bring stands in stark contrast to my first, as opposed to protest and violence breaking out in Kenya, we instead focus on London, where this week over 22,500 off duty police officers took the streets. They marched for concerns over their pay. The issue arises from a promised 2.5 percent pay increase which was knocked down to only 1.9 by Minister Jacqui Smith.
The protest it self was quite remarkable being the largest ever staged by policemen and women in Britain. Originally predicted to have a turnout of 15,000 officers by the organizers of the protest, they quickly ran out of the white caps which they had made to wear for the protest. During the protest the odd humor of officers tasked with policing the police was not lost on those in attendance as the march stretched on for three miles through Central London.
Surprisingly a very small group of counter protesters, about 20, from an anarchist group called “Class War”, showed at the protest heckling and jeering. “We remember what they did for other workers in the 1980’s – the printers, dockers, the miners.” One of the counter protesters, a woman, was arrested on the under an offense to public order.
Aside from the small group of counter-protesters, the march was described as “sensible”, policemen and women reducing what might be a more violent reaction to peaceful dissent by wearing white caps with “Fair pay for police” written on them and taking to the streets in overwhelming numbers. The police themselves state that its not so much an issue of the money specifically, but instead a matter of fairness and promises kept and broken by the government. Check it out here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3240694.ece