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General News of Friday, 21 July 1995

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Demonstrations and politics during UK-visit

The visit of the President, Jerry Rawlings to London met with its fair share of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations.

Friday 14th July 1995 - Centre Point, Tottenham Court Road, London -- The London branch of the NDC organised a counter-demonstration against the non-NDC demonstrators.

Having been out-shouted and embarrassed by the demonstrators on Tuesday 11 July, the NDC decided to beat the demonstrators at their own game. They got police permit to demonstrate and they went further to hire a very popular drama troupe ADZIDZO to come and perform on the forecourts of the CBI headquarters in Central London. With the dancers dressed in very colourful clothes and dancing to very good African music from the drummers, they did indeed "steal the show".

The non-NDC demonstrators were there in their numbers but this time, the noise of Adzidzo was greater than theirs.

All in all it was a very peaceful affair. It is hoped that all sides in the Ghanaian political divide will learn from the tolerance of the British Police who did an excellent work in ensuring that demonstrations by opposing forces at the same place never led to bloodshed or disorder.

Each group was given a territory for their demonstrations and that certainly helped matters. The only sad thing that day was when two members of the UK and Ireland Branch of the NDC tried to heckle a gentleman in a "kume preko" T-shirt. Yours sincerely was around and when he questioned both gentlemen for their actions, reason returned to them and they allowed peace to prevail. The gentleman, who gave his name as Napoleon Abdulai went about his duty peacefully without any more problems.