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The policing of protest remains a vexed and contentious area, and this article examines the operation by Police Scotland around the National Service of Thanksgiving for King Charles and Queen Camilla in Edinburgh, July 2023. There were a number of reasons why this particular operation faced a high degree of scrutiny, not least several arrests made some months previously around the funeral of the late Queen, and arrests made by the Metropolitan Police around the Coronation in London. From the outset Police Scotland emphasised a 'human rights approach' which aimed to balance security and public safety against the rights of those spectating and of those protesting the event. Here we examine the difficulties faced in such a complex operation, and assess the extent to which Police Scotland were able to deliver on their intended approach [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The casual observer of the controversy over policing at April 2009's G20 summit in London might have been forgiven for imagining that Britain's media serves as a bulwark against the abuse of power, fearlessly illuminating and condemning injustice. The publication of video footage and eye-witness accounts to heavy-handed protest policing has certainly raised the profile of this issue and led, concretely, to formal investigation of both individual police officers and to policing strategies more broadly. In this paper we examine the policing of protest, and in particular 'anti-systemic' protest, but also examine the role of the newspaper media in the interplay between police and protest. We argue that the media has often fomented and ignored the very 'abuses' they are now so eager to condemn. The key difference between coverage of the 2009 G20 summit and past such events, we contend, is the tragic death of an innocent bystander which has shifted the way in which the media has framed events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]