The activist told the Local Democracy Reporting Service they “passed out for a few seconds” after the altercation
Hackney Council is reportedly “looking into” the actions of a security guard after footage showed a protester being allegedly thrown to the ground at the Town Hall.
Footage shared with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), which captures an “occupation” of the council headquarters on August 27, shows a man falling to the ground after contact with a security guard after he tried to block the guard’s path.
Demonstrators allege the man was pushed, but the council has not responded to requests for comment on the matter.
The LDRS understands scores of housing demonstrators had flooded the Town Hall foyer for two hours, railing against the overcrowded conditions of a family in temporary accommodation. A spokesperson for the group, Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth, claims protesters and their children were “intimidated” by security staff and “shaken” after one of their members was pushed to the floor.
The man captured in the video, who wished to keep his identity private, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he had arrived in the council lobby roughly a minute before the altercation. “I passed out for a few seconds,” he said. “The guard denied doing anything wrong. He went on pointing in people’s faces.”
Activists claim the security guard was trying to take items from the group’s trolley, reportedly “loaded with children’s toy musical instruments and biscuits”.
The protesters had arrived to advocate for a woman and her children, who have been living in various one-bedroom temporary accommodation flats, “all of them a Category 1 hazard for crowding”, allegedly in breach of the government’s Homelessness Code of Guidance.
The group says the woman’s 13-year-old daughter was being forced to sleep in the living room – next to a refrigerator that was too large to fit in the kitchen. HASL says the family have won three appeals against the council placing her in cramped housing, and they are now pursuing their fourth.
After two hours of waiting to meet with Mayor of Hackney, Zoë Garbett, protesters spoke to Cabinet Member for Healthy Communities and Adult Social Care, Sally Zlotowitz, who “confirmed that she supported the group’s right to protest and that the actions of security would be looked into,” the group claimed.
Elizabeth Wyatt from HASL said the group had never seen such a “violent and aggressive response” to a protest occupation in 13 years of operation.
“While the new Green administration has changed the rhetoric of Hackney Council, the council’s handling of [this woman’s housing] case shows that nothing has changed for Hackney’s homeless families. The council is normalising kids growing up in overcrowded temporary accommodation where there is not even a sofa for friends to come round, but we won’t let this happen,” she said.
The LDRS contacted Hackney Council and Mayor Garbett for comment but neither had responded at the time of publication.
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