A police chief from Greater Manchester criticised the Tory MP Nigel Evans on Tuesday for his complaints about how the local police handled hostile crowds at the Conservative conference in the city last week.
Ian Hanson, chair of the Greater Manchester Police Federation, a trade union for the city’s force, responded to remarks from Evans in the Commons describing protestors’ behaviour as “vile abuse tantamount to hate crimes”, and demanding answers from local police.
As reported by the Right Dishonourable, the event saw journalists spat on and one young Tory hit in the forehead with an egg. Some 19 people were arrested throughout the course of the conference.
However Hanson rebutted Evans’ criticism, according to Manchester Evening News:
“Mr Evans has had a glimpse into the real world of what policing looks like in 2015, which is the fact that we do not have the police officers to provide a ‘ring of steel’ around him as we once did.
“Things got a bit uncomfortable and we dealt with it – get over yourself Mr Evans, you are no more important than everybody else in Manchester who gave up their police officers to keep you safe. You should be thanking the communities and police officers of Greater Manchester, not attacking them.”
The police chair went on the note that Greater Manchester Police has lost nearly 2,000 officers since 2010, in a climate of government cuts under the Tory-Liberal coalition.
Police chiefs have called policing the event “incredibly complex”, owing to some 70,000 protestors thought to have turned up during the four-day conference – making it the biggest demo in Mancunian history according to Hanson.
“Mr Evans makes no mention of the long hours worked by the men and women of GMP and the months of planning that went into the policing effort,” he added. “Instead, he focuses in on what affects him.”
Image Credit – Police Band, Manchester Remembrance, November 2010 by Stuart Grout
