ABSTRACT
In the words of one Newham police officer the Olympics were the revenge of middle England after the 2011 riots. Despite the presence of thousands of overseas visitors the spectators who flocked to the 2012 Games were largely white, well-behaved, patient and mildly excited. During the Olympics, Meridian Square was a very busy and complex public space located in-between the inner and outer Olympic areas: not inside the Olympic Park, Westfield Mall or Stratford station, but very much at the policing centre of the Olympic Command Zone (OCZ). The Games exacerbated the levels of preaching, but most were there because of the exceptional flow of people in a significant pedestrian bottleneck. Father Horan was, according to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Olympic Intelligence Team, a potential threat to the Games, carrying the potential to disrupt. He was a defrocked Irish-born Roman Catholic Priest notorious for his disruption of sporting events.
