10 Sep 2025

The demonstration was very loud and effective inside the hotel and definitely
well worth doing again. The police attempt[ed] to move the demonstration away under
the Public Order Act.

Greta Thunberg was acquitted last year in exactly these circumstances when
charged for protesting outside this exact same hotel. The magistrate ruled that
police instructions to move on were "unlawful". That is worth remembering for
the next couple of nights.

I had dashed down from Edinburgh, literally just dropping everything and heading
to the station, on hearing that Herzog's visit was starting a couple of days
earlier than expected. I attended the PSC demonstration outside Downing
St. Frankly it was disappointingly small - not much more than one person for
every mile I had covered to get there.

The change of date, short notice and a tube strike all contributed, but I do
hope protest will grow during Herzog's three day visit. Be inspired by this
precedent:

In 1848-9, Hapsburg General Julius von Haynau crushed uprisings in Hungary and
in Brescia with extreme force. In Brescia about 1,000 were killed, both
revolutionaries and civilians, including women and children, with widespread
rape, floggings and executions.

In Hungary about 2,000 revolutionaries were killed across four "battles" and a
slightly larger number of civilians were massacred, again with widespread rape,
flogging and looting.

In 1850 Haynau was on a private visit to London and touring the Barclay and
Perkins brewery in Southwark. He was recognised by some draymen who pelted him
with refuse and chased him from the brewery, where a larger crowd joined in.

Eventually Haynau took refuge in the George Inn on Borough High Street, where he
hid either in a waste bin or under a bed (accounts differ). Eventually he was
rescued by the police but nobody was arrested.

Generations of schoolchildren - myself included - were taught that the Haynau
incident was something to be proud of and an example of how foreign "tyrants"
should be treated in London. The government of Prime Minister Lord John Russell
- grandfather of Betrand Russell - refused to prosecute the draymen, to the fury
of the Austrian government.

Herzog is of course actively participating in a Genocide far worse than anything
Haynau did, and was directly quoted by the ICJ as indicating intent of genocide.
-- Cont'd at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/09/herzog-and-haynau/