Whatever Happened to People Power?
Whatever Happened to People Power? is our look at the concerns people have about their right to stand up and be counted when they demand action on the issues they care about.
We met protesters who do not fit the image of what a lot of people might think an activist looks like.
Peter Harbour worked as a physicist all his adult life without a blemish on his record. Yet when he and other local people decided to challenge a power company's plans to fill in the last of their local countryside lakes with ash, a court issued them with an injunction that stopped them in their tracks.
The company, npower, said it had applied for the injunction because its staff were being harassed and threatened by activists connected to the squatters occupying an empty building on its land.
What's more, that injunction, naming six people including Mr Harbour, appeared on a police website dedicated to tackling domestic extremists - a development that frightened both Mr Harbour and many of the law-abiding locals. Although in the end their campaign was successful and the power company abandoned its plans, Mr Harbour was left shocked by the way he and his fellow campaigners were treated.
We also met Hannah McClure, a 21-year-old student and a veteran of several direct action campaigns. Hannah agrees that protesters are being treated unfairly. She told me that while she's been arrested for taking direct action on environmental issues, she was not prepared for what happened in a squat where about 80 demonstrators spent the night in an empty office building following the G20 protests in central London.
In Whatever Happened to People Power?, we show amateur video footage of the moment when 100 police officers stormed the building - two armed with Taser guns - threatening those inside.
On the tape you can hear the squatters' fear as one shouts out "They're going to kill one of us".
The police told us they behaved with justifiable caution as they did not know what to expect when they went into the building and had information that some inside were violent. In the end, only two of the squatters were arrested and neither has been charged with any offence.
In the programme, we look at these instances and others that raise questions about police tactics when dealing with protesters.
It's easy to understand the frustration and stress officers are put under when confronted by verbally aggressive protesters who scream and shout and swear inches from their faces as they hold a line at a demonstration.
The question I asked the Police's Assistant Commissioner was whether it was ever justified to punch a protester in the face, whack them with a baton or bash them with a riot shield - all examples that were caught on camera and appear in our programme.
The Met told me that officers are trained to use only appropriate force and are held accountable for their actions.
It is the use of force by the police, captured on camera and played out to the public via social networking sites that has damaged the public's confidence in the police - a point made in last week's Home Affairs Select Committee
The described the overall police operation as remarkably successful, but added that this was in part down to luck rather than judgement.
To find out more, watch Whatever Happened to People Power?, ´óÏó´«Ã½ One, Monday, 6 July at 8.30pm.
