Friday, 12th April 2019 witnessed a unique protest by the bikers in London. Bikers in thousands of numbers chose to flood the streets of London in protest against the prosecution of a soldier – identified as F. The Bikers comprised of 11000 in number and rode through London to Parliament Square and on to Trafalgar Square.
Most of the protesters comprised of armed forces veterans and they have been opposing the prosecution of an unnamed soldier who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
The Flashback
This has a bearing to what happened on January 30, 1972. The day is referred to Bloody Sunday and is known for the massacre where 13 people were killed and 15 others injured when the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment fired on demonstrators during a civil rights march.
Now, as a result of the decades of legal fight undertaken by the relatives of the victims, a veteran paratrooper has been charged with murders. The paratrooper, named Soldier F, has been charged with murders of James Wray and William McKinney. He has also been slapped charges of attempted murders of Joseph Friel, Michael Quinn, Joe Mahon, and Patrick O’Donnell as well.
The protest has been against the British government. The organizers categorically stated that the fight and the protest were not against the families of the victims. The crux of the matter is no soldier should be prosecuted for an incident that occurred more than 45 years ago. The prosecution has been treated as being one-sided.
The Bikers protest was marked by the participants wearing jackets with the patches showing their biker group. The troop’s veterans also chose to wear the insignia from the respective regiments as well. They also carried flags reading ‘We stand with Soldier F’. The protest took place from Park Lane through Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge, back across the Thames at Westminster Bridge and into Parliament Square. It later took the route through the Parliament Street and Whitehall and through the Cenotaph, ending in Trafalgar Square.
They have been considering that the soldier did his job like others and it cannot be constituted as a crime.
