London policing

One of the ways in which the police in repressive societies intimidate people is by turning up at protest meetings and taking pictures of them. What, then, are we supposed to make of this behaviour in London yesterday? Note that this is the same Metropolitan Police that did nothing about demonstrators who incited to violence in May 2005 and then only responded in February 2006 after a public outcry. Many thanks to Nordishblog.
As Tatchell speaks, note the policeman with the peaked hat tell the policeman with the baseball hat which citizen to photograph. Is this how we do policing in Britain?
Update 1: click on this link to see the pic, it is the 53rd picture down.
Update 2: A correspondent who must remain anonymous writes that “I also include photos of the cops who maintained a very intimidating presence, photographing everyone, including tourists and little old ladies. They were far more aggressive than at Islamist demos apparently.”
The caption with this pic is “snapping a curious canadian tourist, female, around 70.”

Here are the boys in blue again.

The correspondent writes: “an Iraqi named Ali who made a powerful brief speech in which he referred to the severe restrictions on freedom of speech under Saddam and the Taliban”

Our correspondent writes that: “The people wearing danish flags were doing so because they were forbidden to wave them. I persuaded one of them… to wave it despite the ban — the police moved in behind us so we eventually stopped.”

The police intervened at one point. More details on my site and here, note the gentleman that they spoke to was Iranian.
Andrew Apostolou (pyjamas in the wash, finally).