“We should remember 21 March as a day where people got together to protest, and fought back against the brutality the police used. It should be a reminder that we are stronger together,” says Ryan Roberts. “We also need to remember all the people injured and imprisoned.”
Roberts is serving a 14-year prison sentence for his involvement in the uprising against police violence outside Bristol’s Bridewell police station four years ago today. He’s being held hundreds of miles from his friends and supporters, at HMP Swaleside in Kent.
While the violence of that night has long passed, the campaign of repression by the police and state is far from over. Many, like Roberts, are still in jail; some are still being dragged through the courts, others are being held under investigation with no indication of whether or not the authorities plan to prosecute them.
Roberts received the longest sentence of the 85 or more people arrested for their part in the Kill the Bill demonstration, in which a protest against the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill ended in a confrontation with the police. Protesters have now received over 110 years in prison between them.
The majority of defendants were initially charged with riot – the most serious public order offence in English law. The Director of Public Prosecutions and Avon and Somerset Police’s decision to use the riot charge has been widely criticised. It has marked the most widespread use of the charge against demonstrators since the 1980s. Avon and Somerset Police’s operation following the uprising was the biggest in its history, and is still ongoing.
Defund the police
Over 60 demonstrators were hospitalised on 21 March 2021, after the police used pepper spray, dangerous overarm strikes with extendable batons and shields as well as deploying dogs and horses. The crowd fought back, seizing police batons, helmets and riot shields. The windows of Bridewell were smashed and several police vehicles were set alight.
A parliamentary inquiry into how the police handled the protests in Bristol and Clapham, in south London, found that officers “used unnecessary and excessive force”, and wrongly presumed that the protests, which happened during the Covid pandemic, were illegal. It found “significant failings”, including apparent “revenge policing”.
In Bristol, one police vehicle was emblazoned with the words ‘defund the police’. This call to action was at the time growing in popularity in the UK after the murder by a serving police officer of Sarah Everard, and in the US after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. That year, two men, Mohammed Hassan and Mouayed Bashir had died in or after police contact at police stations in Cardiff and Newport.
‘Defund the Police’ is a “message that still rings true today”, says Roberts, speaking to the Cable from behind bars: “Defunding the police and the whole repressive system, means divesting that money [and using it] to actually help people. The state [knows] what the problems are, but they just focus on repression rather than support.”
Fighting for Travellers’ rights
Ryan Dwyer, who is serving four and a half years for riot at HMP Cookham Wood in Kent, said that he remembered feeling “the strength and the resilience of people” acting together in response to police violence in Bristol four years ago. “I think we should remember that people gave up their freedom in order to stand up for change and to make a difference.”
“It’s important not to have your voice taken away, to keep on speaking up and being out on the streets,” he told the Cable from prison.
A disproportionate number of those imprisoned following the Kill the Bill demonstration were people who lived in vehicles on sites around Bristol – Roberts and Dwyer were among them.
According to Roberts, the PCSC Bill, which has since been passed into law, “makes living nomadic so much harder. It gives more power to the police to evict sites. There aren’t many safe sites where Travellers can live or stop by. The new powers mean the cops can seize your vehicle – which is your home – fine you and send you to prison.”
“Because I can’t afford to live in a house and choose to live in a caravan rather than living in a tent, they say I’m a criminal. Even living in a tent now is being persecuted. The Roma and Traveller community have been criminalised for a long time but [this Act] adds more to that historic oppression.
“That’s why so many of us and people from other communities went out on the streets, not just that day, but people kept going out and took the streets several more times,” he said.
Dwyer was living in a vehicle when he was arrested. He said he “loved the freedom of living outside the system”. He grew up in care, constantly moving from one home to another, which he said made it natural for him to live on the road.
He attended the second KTB demonstration on College Green on 23 March, where police have been widely criticised for carrying out an act of “revenge” for the events at Bridewell two days earlier. He told the Cable about the moment the cops descended on this Traveller-organised gathering.
“People were singing, dancing, making speeches about the right to roam. It was a really chill family atmosphere – and I remember the riot police coming down the hill towards us. It was so brutal, shocking. I remember my friend’s partner getting pulled along the ground by her hair by one of the officers.”
Dwyer was sentenced to four and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to riot. Roberts was convicted by a jury of riot and arson and attempted arson charges for his involvement in the 21 March unrest.
Giving evidence at his trial, Roberts said the the mood of the demonstration on 21 March changed when police in riot gear started pushing, shoving and hitting the crowd with shields and batons. “I was fighting for a cause I felt strongly about,” he told Bristol Crown Court at the time.
The struggle from behind bars
Roberts has continued his struggle from within prison. Many prisoners are employed while doing their sentence, but are denied the minimum wage. Private companies such as Virgin Airlines, DHL, Tesco and Sainsbury’s reportedly contract-out work to prisoners in HMP Swaleside, where Roberts is being held.
Roberts got a job in the prison as a cleaner and said he was paid just £1 for a 2-3 hour session. Prisoners often have no support from outside and are forced to work for a pittance so that they can afford to pay for toiletries and personal items in the prison canteen, and for the phone calls which provide a lifeline to the outside world.
In the face of this continued repression, Roberts decided to organise for better conditions. He joined the Incarcerated Workers’ Organising Committee (IWOC) of the radical trade union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
On top of the terrible pay, sanitary conditions on Roberts’s wing were awful, the prison’s cleaning budget was too low and piles of rotting food often lay around uncollected. The food portions being provided by the canteen were often insufficient too, he said.
Roberts and other prisoners decided to take direct action and, in January, Roberts held a protest on the netting which separates the wing floors. He was restrained by officers, sustaining severe bruising. Later that month, IWOC sent a grievance letter to the prison on Roberts’s behalf, demanding improvement in conditions.
According to IWOC, Roberts has faced “retribution” from the prison staff since then, including being dismissed from his job. An IWOC spokesperson told the Cable that Roberts and other prisoners’ actions were part of a “powerful moment” that demonstrates “the potential of using union tactics to collectivise and challenge the issues faced by prisoners”
In “maintaining their spirit of resistance” the Kill the Bill prisoners are “continuing the uprising,” the Committee said.
Set up to fail
Ryan Dwyer was released on license in December 2023, halfway through his sentence. Like many other prisoners, he said that he was “set up to fail” by the probation service. He was subject to draconian license conditions which banned him from Bristol, controlled his use of electronic devices, and prevented him from attending political meetings.
The probation service placed him in temporary accommodation in Dover.
Dwyer said that he wanted to get a job when he got out of prison, but that working wasn’t feasible because of the conditions placed on him. He decided to concentrate on developing himself as a drum and bass MC instead (you can check out his music here and here).
After the initial period was up, Dwyer said his probation officer told him there would be no help with moving on. They referred him to a local homeless charity, and told him that he could go there to get a sleeping bag.
Dwyer managed to stay off the streets by sofa surfing. His license conditions stipulated that he had to reside in the counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey, where he didn’t know many people. Despite being on the brink of homelessness, he still had to remain in regular contact with the Probation Service.
A few months later, a close friend of his committed suicide. Dwyer told the Cable that he’d known him since he was a teenager and that he was deeply distraught at his passing. He coped with the grief by visiting a mutual acquaintance so they could mourn together.
Dwyer said his “head was a mess”, and he didn’t contact probation for four days. When he did get back in touch, the probation officer’s response was to order his recall to prison. “I expected them to have a bit of understanding and empathy,” Dwyer told the Cable. “I said, ‘can’t I just come to the office and explain what happened?’. But instead, I got a full recall.”
Dwyer said he is no longer interested in early release. “I’m not letting them have control over me anymore. I don’t want them to mess with my life again, so I’m not engaging with them – I’m going to do the rest of my sentence and then I’ll be free of them.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, asked for comment on Dwyer’s case, said: “Offenders released on licence must follow strict conditions, such as curfews, exclusion zones… They face going back to prison if they break the rules – as the public would expect.”
The power of solidarity
Both Roberts and Dwyer emphasised the amount of support they have received since their arrests from people and groups in Bristol, and how this has made their sentences easier to bear.
“I’ve received letters and emails from national and international contacts,” said Roberts. “Even four years down the line, people are still reading about KTB and sending me letters. It’s even been studied at university”.
Dwyer said he had never expected any support from outside. He said sometimes when he had “a shit day, a dark day in prison, I’d come back to my cell and find three or four letters under my door. I just want to say thank you to everybody, send my love and that I’ll be with you all on the streets soon.”
Roberts said that despite the increasing risk of police repression, he knows people will keep fighting. He said he hopes people will “keep talking about Kill the Bill, keep talking about other struggles too, keep supporting people in prison, for this and other cases.
“Let’s keep getting together, keep sharing, keep building community. Talk to your neighbours, to your friends, your comrades and organise.”
You can find out how to write to the Kill the Bill prisoners here, or donate to this crowdfunder to support those in prison.
Tom Anderson is an anarchist writer and organiser from Bristol. He is a member of radical writers’ cooperative Shoal Collective.
