Dear Editor,
According to Cornwall Live, on 5 May
“Truro Farmers Market’s biggest event is cancelled because it’s now a site for G7 summit protests. The market has had a terrible year and now its biggest event has to be called off”
Truro’s Lemon Quay was to have hosted a special 5 day market during the G7 summit’s sojourn in St. Ives, a commercial opportunity the traders have long planned and badly needed. Their displacement to a smaller, less prominent site has been ordered to allow Police to contain an expected large gathering of climate activists there instead.
This decision was taken out of the hands of the City Council. Full transparency is now a matter of urgency. Who ordered this, and why, and what do they stand to gain from it?
● XR’s polite, non-violent advance notice and request to the police never needed to become into an us-or-them conflict with the marketeers and tourists.
● The traders don’t need to be moved around like puppets, deprived of their golden chance to host plenty of visitors and recoup some of lockdown’s lost profits.
● The Council is perfectly able to debate and plan for fairness and civility while various demands arise on our plentifully spacious city squares.
It appears obvious that someone, probably a Home Office power broker, has set out to aggravate everyone. I do not think this decision was made in stupidity. Instead its intention was to fix the townspeople’s gaze towards scarce money and raw economic survival, eclipsing their sympathies for even peaceful protesters.
Is this is a deliberate manoeuvre to drum up support for the increasingly fascistic movement to outlaw demonstrations? Is it headed by Priti Patel with her unfit new Crime and Policing Bill that’s proving tricky to get through Parliament?
I beg all my fellow Cornwall residents to view the present “clash” with the cynicism it deserves. This situation has all the hallmarks of social engineering. Let’s see some investigative journalism trace this decision back to its origin, and let’s not allow ourselves to be manipulated into enmity with each other and blind spots about civil liberties.
[name withheld]
UPDATE:
