Anne Power said police had failed to protect protesters from oncoming lorries.

Isn’t it time the police stopped allowing politicians to use them in defence of the indefensible?

In the 1980s, they were Margaret Thatcher’s baton, coming down hard on striking miners.

Now they are acting in defence of fracking – an environmentally-damaging process that almost nobody in the UK wants (apart from politicians and the major companies that fund them).

This is what they do:

Is that acceptable to you?

Perhaps you think it is unfair to criticise politicians for the actions of the police on this occasion. But consider this:

If the political decision to allow fracking had not been made, those police officers could have been detecting and solving crime instead.

Here’s a report on the event, from The Independent:

A disabled 85-year-old woman was left bruised after being dragged across a busy road by three police officers during an anti-fracking protest.

Anne Power, a Green Party member and anti-fracking campaigner, was sitting outside a fracking site near Little Plumpton, Lancashire, when a scrum of officers lifted her from her seat.

Video of the incident… shows her being dragged across a major road by her shoulders, with her heels scraping along the ground.

Asked afterwards why the police had not carried the pensioner properly, with her legs supported, a senior officer said they would do so “next time”.

Ms Power said she was left with bruises on her shoulders and was so angry that she has struggled to sleep since.

The retired teacher and counsellor, who has had two hip replacement operations and usually uses a walking stick, told The Independent she feared the officers would break her bones.

The site in Lancashire where Ms Power was protesting is owned by energy company Cuadrilla. It was revealed in August that police had used force against protesters at the site 165 times since the start of July alone.

A spokesman for Lancashire Constabulary said no complaints had been made and no officers had been disciplined over the incident.

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