OCCUPY Democracy activists have called for a mass demonstration against police violence this evening as their occupation in Parliament Square reaches its seventh day.

Protesters labelled the Met’s intervention in Parliament Square “an expensive, heavy-handed political policing operation.”

A group statement released yesterday read: “They are disrupting peaceful protest with an ongoing and constant campaign of harassment, physically, mentally and emotionally — which is very much at odds with the police’s insistence that they are ‘facilitating’ the protest.”

Despite having been banned from the green, Occupy Democracy has now “respectfully occupied” the Churchill plinth.

Activist Danny, who has been on the plinth for almost 48 hours said: “We’ve had our freedom to protest removed, with no proper explanation why.

“The rights of the damaged area of grass to regrow this week — rather than next week after our protest — has been deemed to be of more importance than our rights to assemble and protest, even though a significant area of the square is intact.”