Tory Mp, Mark Field, facing calls to be sacked after grabbing protestor by neck.

I think it was kind of out of order to grab her by her neck but I still agree with what he did. After all, you must be thick if you think you can gate crash a dinner without being escorted out in a harsh manner

I suspect he wouldn't have been quite so willing to get stuck in had it been a male protester.

Field's the one who (amongst other memorable things) advocated a brutal clearance of the homeless protests at St Pauls and wanted to stop enquiries into MPs expenses. Lovely man.

she got exactly what she wanted... A hero of the protest I imagine, huge national coverage.

Good on the MP though, as a nation we shouldn't be so terrified of taking charge and authority - they came in to disrupt the event, it should be perfectly acceptable for the people in the event to tell them to **** off, and use reasonable force to make it happen. Rather then just sitting there and letting them disrupt the event.

Was it reasonable force.. its very borderline, but I would just about air on the side of yes..

(He may not have gotten as much flack if his face didn't look like he was enjoying it so much...)

No ordinary man, even an MP, has the right to grab women by their throats and slam them against walls without the least offer of violence or threat. I hope Greenpeace sue him privately for assault if he doesn't incur an official prosecution, as that's what it was. His excuse that he feared violence is total spin and hokum, the plain result of a post-action legal consultation and a smart alec Barista, er, Barrister.

So your opinion is that peaceful political protest should be met with neck grabs and body slams?

Would it be more convenient for the folks thinking this kind of thing is OK to simply hand over to Fascism right away, rather than waste time on the middle bit with swaggering storm troopers and street battles?

How would you have done it? I guess he could have waited until she was past then grab her by the arm to drag her back, but using his bodyweight and the pillar to block her progress is much more effective.

What does that mean? When alone (as security seem to have done here), he'll defend against threats he thinks he's strong enough to deal with alone? That seems a reasonable attitude to have.


Perhaps, but not really relevant to whether his actions last night were acceptable or not.

Yeah, I think it was reasonable force. I don't know how hard he was squeezing her neck as he pushed her out, but definitely the rest was fine.



I thought it was her chest, arm and shoulder initially, then the back of her neck at the end - not her throat and no choking. 'Slam' is an exaggeration too - a definite push.

There are two issues here I guess. One is how long do you let an aggressive potential threat develop in a situation like this before intervening, and what level of confrontation/force/violence is acceptable at the point of your intervention?

I agree with you on his excuses, they are rubbish. He got angry, and lost control - any explanation beyond that is just digging himself a deeper hole because we can all clearly see what happened. No one would suspect her of being armed or violent.

Where I disagree, is that I don't like the idea that we are so affraid of contfontations and having to take authority and action, that we have a room full of suposidly powerful leaders, who when confronted with a group barging into their event, are so frozen by fear that they have to sit quitely and politly and let the other people disrupt their private event until the police arrives. I think we should be able to live in a society where if you are having a private event, and people are trying to activly disrupt it and cause trouble, you should be able to take reasonable action without needing the police.

In this case, I say its borderline because I think the push into the column was unnecessary.. him forcibly evicting her from the room I think is perfectly fine.

I would've grabbed her arm

I think that would have been the better option politically (i.e. he wouldn't have been criticised so much, and possibly not even been suspended), providing he could maintain the grip. But I wouldn't fault him for choosing the more effective and likely to succeed method. You can stop a lot more force with your own body weight and the help of a pillar than you can relying on your grip and them not twisting and jerking out of it.

he should have let security/police handle it - that's their job.

All events like this at a high level have security and organisational staff with a duty to patrol for incidents. This is a case of an arrogant male Tory not waiting for the proper authorities but instead taking it on himself to violently restrain a peaceful female protester about half his size and weight.

All events like this at a high level have security and organisational staff with a duty to patrol for incidents. This is a case of an arrogant male Tory not waiting for the proper authorities but instead taking it on himself to violently restrain a peaceful female protester about half his size and weight.

he should have let security/police handle it - that's their job.

Lol I'm sure he could have stopped her by grabbing her arm anyway, he looks much more stronger than her and she was wearing a dress which restricts her ability to run.

Advocating violence against peaceful women who are loud, basically.

he should have let security/police handle it - that's their job.

Nah by grabbing her he ended whatever nonsense she was planning to do

I suspect he wouldn't have been quite so willing to get stuck in had it been a male protester.

Field's the one who (amongst other memorable things) advocated a brutal clearance of the homeless protests at St Pauls and wanted to stop enquiries into MPs expenses. Lovely man.

If there's one thing I've learnt from this thread, it's that from now on if an intruder comes into my house I'll just let them be. Because even if someone enters where they shouldn't be, it doesn't give you the right to get them out

(1) That was male on male. (2) Did you grab him in a neck hold and slam him against a wall?