The Battle for Grosvenor Square
| Date | 01 May 1968 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6804100502 |
| Published date | 01 May 1968 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE
BATTLE
FOR
GROSVENOR
SQUARE
On Sunday, March 17, an estimated 10,000 people, for the most part
young, gathered in Grosvenor Square following ameeting in Trafalgar
Square to protest against the Vietnam war. To control them in the Square
were some 800 policemen. In the violence that followed 117 policemen
were injured, four
of
whom
were detained in hospital. Proceedings were
later taken against 246 demonstrators. Below we recount, for the
most
part in his own words, the experience
of
one young man who was in
Grosvenor Square that Sunday.
John Calvert is 24. He went to a grammar school where he
obtained nine 0 levels (seven in academic subjects) and one A
level G.e.E. After leaving school he worked as a bank cashier,
an insurance clerk, a double bass player in a dance band and
"pop"
group, and as a dance hall manager. Intelligent - cer-
tainly; unsettled -apparently. The stuff of which demonstrators
are made?
Well, John Calvert was in Grosvenor Square on Sunday, March
17, but not as a demonstrator.
For
2t years ago, feeling, in his
words, that
"I
had
reached an age and achieved nothing and it
was time to knuckle down ", he joined the Metropolitan Police.
And on that Sunday he was part of a cordon protecting the
American Embassy against his contemporaries, the majority,
probably, with a very similar background to his own.
P.e.
John Calvert and his colleagues de-bussed at the South
Audley St. corner of Grosvenor Square at about 5.30 p.m., to take
up position with their backs to the Embassy, its last line of pro-
tection.
"We
saw the crowd break through the cordon on the
other side
and
come across the square; they were uprooting the
fences, ripping up the turf and picking up anything throwable "
P.C. Calvert said.
By then the crowd was about 50 yards away facing the Em-
bassy, and what had been picked up - as well as what had been
brought - was put to use.
"They
were
thro'tYing
clods of earth
- we afterwards found that one of these, which had felled a six
foot policeman, had a lead weight inside it; ball bearings - they
were so small that you couldn't see them, just hear them whistling
through the air; pennies, bags of flour, open tins of red paint and
one or two smoke
bombs".
Hand
to hand fighting developed a short while later after the
cordon on the inside of the square
had
been ordered to move for-
ward and push the crowd back.
"There
were not enough of them
and the crowd broke
through"
P.e.
Calvert said.
"They
came
at us using sticks, branches of trees, anything they had. The
girls were every bit as vicious as the men ".
The situation was saved by the mounted police who moved in
from the flank perhaps five or 10 minutes later.
"The
crowd were
coming right up to the horses, kicking them and hitting them with
196 May 1968
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