An anti-conservative activist returned to Parliament Square and promised to hold a protest “twice as hard” a day after his reinforcements were seized by police.
“Stop Brexit Man” Steve Bray blared several songs at the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday before officers again threatened to take his equipment.
The protester with a hat-wearing protester moved from a traffic island to the sidewalk across the road, but police told him it was still in a designated area where noisy protest was under the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act be prohibited.
I have more amplifiers on order and I am going to connect four amplifiers to each other. Actually I’m going to wire eight together
Mr Bray told the PA news agency: “I have more amplifiers on order and I am going to connect four amplifiers together – not this week, maybe next week – and it will be twice as hard as it was here to compensate for the move to the corner.
“Actually, I’m going to wire eight together.”
Mr Bray shouted “it’s ridiculous, it’s fascism” while officials told him to stop.
One of the songs he played was the 1975 Bay City Rollers song Bye Bye Baby covered with the lyrics “bye bye Boris”, as another protester took a look and officers dared to “arrest” me .
Mr. Bray later moved to another location with his amplifier under an arch outside the Houses of Parliament gift shop, where he said police intervened and quoted the highway law.
“He says it’s a public right-of-way, but so is that island there, so is any place where people protest – I think he got it wrong,” Mr Bray said.
In the afternoon, he again played music at full volume on the traffic island while there were no police officers nearby.
The Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday that Mr. Bray has been reported for the offense, which means he will be considered for prosecution.
“Yesterday it was very intimidating, they followed me everywhere,” he said.
“We are only here to show our opposition to this government and we are a protest, we will be noisy. Protests are about sound and vision. ”
Mr. Bray considered ways to prevent his amplifiers from being seized again, saying, “Maybe I’ll tie it to my back, but it’s heavy, or get on a bike.
“We’ll get a rickshaw and we’ll turn around a bit.”
The small group of protesters waved EU flags and held posters and EU umbrellas on a rainy day in Westminster.
Mr. Bray is known as the Stop Brexit Man because he is regularly in the area playing loud music and using a megaphone to shout “Stop Brexit”.
Officials said on Tuesday that the equipment had been seized under section 145 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, which was extended that day to a larger area around the Houses of Parliament.
Amnesty International said the “deeply authoritarian new policing laws are a charter for suppressing legal protests” and called it a “dark day for freedom in our country”.
Donations to Mr Bray’s fundraising page shot up to £ 120,600.
More than 6,000 contributions have been made in the 99 weeks since the page was created.