Protesters complaining of assault

Rasczak

Yeah no-one can condone violence against women
but Greenpeace are deliberately using women as a weapon and putting women in the line of danger as demonstrated when two women kicked this off
Greenpeace activists stage climate protest on BP oil rig as it is towed out to sea in Scotland
prevented 100 personnel from carrying out their lawful employment
at a minimum this is breach of the Peace not a peaceful protest

Cliff

We have all encountered situations like this before and the way to defuse the situation is with kindness.  Avoid physical contact, smile and adopt positive body language (assume you are being filmed), thank them for their protest, allow them to briefly address the crowd, explain it is a private venue and invite them out of the respective area and offer them drink/refreshments.

All probably a little to soft and left wing for many here.  But if they had done that Field would still have his job, there would have been little to no media coverage and all parties would have gone home happy.

It was a private venue and the ingredients for a breach of peace require it to be a public place.​

Lesmor

At the time, it wasn't obvious what the woman's motives were. It is reported that the people in the room were quite scared and they just didn't know what was going on. Nearly all of the guests froze and did nothing, and it was only one person that chose to stop the women in her tracks.
In retrospect its easy to say that he used too much force, but at the time he did what he thought was necessary. He had to me firm that's for sure. Also in retrospect, where was security?
There should be no action against him. The guests might like to thank him.

Rasczak

@Rasczak
I take it that's what happens with 24 hours to think about it, and perfect 50:50 hind sight

He should think himself lucky that he didn't put his arms around her tits then it would be cries of sexual harassment followed by his name on the sex offenders list

mtenga

No, it was/is standing procedure and how we dealt with CND protestors when I was serving

IronGiant

My memory must be failing now I've hit the big 5 but I don't remember the police being so "nice" to anything left leaning in the 80's.

leamspaceman

Put your hands around their tits?

IronGiant

It's not just that he didn't like the look of her.

She invaded a private function with some force and we all know in these times of heightened awareness that she could have posed more of a threat than she actually did.

And he was hardly violent.

Women want to be treated as equals but when something like this happens it suddenly becomes something different.

I'm all for an anarchic protest... fair play. However, if you engage in such protests you have to be ready to meet some force back at you.

Garrett

A cowardly snowflake scared of a woman in an evening dress would have stayed in their seat.

Rasczak

Looks as though she got further than the other protesters and making way round towards the speaker, also had an handbag which a lot of lethal things could have been in it, the alarm was going off so something dangerous could have been going down.
He acted on the spur of the moment, there were very few places he really could have grabbed her apart from her arms and she really no loose fitting clothing and if something had happened to her dress he would have been accused of far worse.
It's always wise to be after the event.

I just this moment after typing above looked for a way to eject someone and think she got of light, also looking round found: criminal battery is an unlawful use of force against another person.