Meanwhile, five people have been
arrested at protests in West London
today. The Met police says a group of
masked men attempted to enter the Crown
Plaza Hotel in Oxbridge via the rear
entrance, damaging some security hoings.
Our correspondent Emma Burchley is in
Oxbridge for us this evening. Uh, by all
accounts, this was quite a large
protest. Emma.
>> Yeah. Actually, there were hundreds of
people who gathered for the protests
today and the police knew they were
going to happen. There were there was a
plan in place and for the vast majority
of people that would have been a
peaceful process protest. However, um at
around midday, according to the police,
two separate anti-asylum groups came
here to the Crown Plaza Hotel. And one
of those or a group of those people,
masked men, tried to gain entry to the
hotel. This is a very, very big hotel
that in the past would have been used
for passengers heading off on holiday,
now being used to house asylum seekers.
They tried to get in. Uh they damaged
some of the security hoarding in the
process. I mean it's 8 foot high all the
way round. It gives it a real feel of
kind of a a prison here it has to be
said. Then a breakaway group headed off.
Um and I'm just going to move around. Um
and you will see that uh over here is
the Novatel. Beyond that is the Holiday
Inn. So these are all hotels very close
together. And now the police also were
there ready uh in case uh there was a
protest and they put in uh cordons. They
lined up blocking the way and actually
there were three arrests. Two police
officers received minor injuries and
then they enforced what's called a
section 35 dispersal order to get the
people uh to leave the area which they
have done. There's absolutely no one
here now at all. Um there has been a
statement from Commander uh Adam Slanei
who's been running policing uh in London
today. He said, "We understand strength
of feeling on these issues. But where
peaceful protest crosses the line into
criminality, including injuries to our
officers, we will take immediate action.
We deployed additional officers to the
area and five arrests have been made for
offenses including assault on a police
officer, a frey and violent disorder.
Around 500 protesters were in the area,
but most people have now dispersed from
the immediate vicinity. However, further
arrests will be made if we need to
tackle disorder. As I said, no one here
uh at the moment. uh but police ready in
case there's uh any further trouble. But
important to note that for the a vast
majority of people, this was a peaceful
uh protest.