The event
Christopher Hitchens in his excellent autobiography Hitch 22 was there and thought that “a revolution was in progress or at least prospect’” and writes about the real sense of danger that people experienced there.
“I can still recall the way in which my throat and heart seemed to swell as the police were temporarily driven back, and the advancing allies of the Vietnamese began to sing “We shall overcome.” The Guardian located years later people who had also shared Hitchens sense of danger. A retired lecturer in English at Strathclyde University, recalls "somehow being fairly near the front, where I was surprised to find a number of people in the crowd urging us to rush forward and storm the embassy steps. The rumour was that US Marines armed with machine guns were behind the doors and would fire live ammunition, so I was pretty reluctant!”
A witness on the BBC article on the riots confirms that “The police told people that if we had got into the embassy the Americans would have shot us."
What happened? The marchers assembled in Trafagular square and marched down into Grosvenor Square which was surrounded by hundreds of police. According to one news report “The police stood “shoulder to shoulder to cordon off the part of the square closest to the embassy.Tensions rose as the crowd refused to back off and mounted officers rode at the demonstrators.The protesters broke through the police ranks onto the lawn of the embassy, tearing up the plastic fence and uprooting parts of a hedge. During a protracted battle, stones, earth, firecrackers and smoke bombs were thrown.One officer was treated for a reported serious spinal injury, another for a neck injury. One officer had his hat knocked off and was struck continuously on the back of the head with a stick from a banner as he clung, head down, to his horse's neck.
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