Million Mask March Activists Clash With Police In London, Russell Brand Joins Crowds

Thousands of anti-capitalist activists took to the streets of central London on Bonfire night to protest against "political oppression", with ten people arrested as masked marchers clashed with police. Demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks and carrying banners and placards descended on Trafalgar Square before marching towards Parliament Square at 6.30pm. Protesters chanted anti-establishment slogans as they milled around, and some who had climbed on to the base of Nelson's Column let off fireworks.

There was a heavy police presence at both Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square, as well as along Whitehall, with officers carrying riot gear, but the protest began peacefully. The entire protest was filmed and streamed live online. Footage showed protesters pushing over bins, shouting at bemused shoppers and commuters and hitting cars and people with yellow flexible tubes. In one section they surrounded a man driving a new Mercedes car and sprayed the back of it with an aerosol, pushing their tubes at him as he opened windows to remonstrate with them. There was a chorus of boos and whistles as an officer from the Metropolitan Police warned protesters about their behaviour over a loud hailer. The protest, the so-called Million Masks March, was organised by activist group Anonymous.

huffingtonpost.co.uk

V for Vendetta masks: Who's behind them?

The sinister Guy Fawkes mask made famous by the film V for Vendetta has become an emblem for anti-establishment protest groups. Who's behind them?

From New York, to London, to Sydney, to Cologne, to Bucharest, there has been a wave of protests against politicians, banks and financial institutions. Anybody watching coverage of the demonstrations may have been struck by a repeated motif - a strangely stylised mask of Guy Fawkes with a moustache and pointy beard.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrived at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest to make a speech wearing one of these masks. He took it off, reportedly at the insistence of the police.

They were thought to have been used first by the notorious hacker-activist group Anonymous in 2008 during a protest against Scientology, but have since spread throughout the global protest movement. The masks are from the 2006 film V for Vendetta where one is worn by an enigmatic lone anarchist who, in the graphic novel on which it is based, uses Fawkes as a role model in his quest to end the rule of a fictional fascist party in the UK.

Anonymous needed an all-purpose image to hide their identity and also symbolise that they stand for individualism - V for Vendetta is a story about one person against the system” David Lloyd

BBC News