Police involved after attempts to disrupt rally
A PROTESTER’S persistent threats to lie down in the road on a section of the race route led to initial stages of the controversial Guernsey Rally being cancelled on Friday night.
They were numerous cases of vandalism, disruption and public interference over the two days of the event, following several written protests in the run-up.
Police were called as a woman was attempting to lie in the road near the Imperial Hotel when cars were about to contest the opening stage.
‘She was threatening to come out when the vehicles were coming and to lie on the road, which obviously then becomes a safety, life or death situation,’ said Comprop Guernsey Rally chairman Karl Marshall.
‘We had to call the police and get them involved to talk to the lady. We tried to talk to the lady but she wasn’t listening.
‘The police dealt with her, so that was that sorted, but unfortunately we lost three stages because of that.’
He said that the organisers did not know who the woman was.
That was not the only incident that caused significant delays on Friday night.
Mr Marshall said another woman, a resident who was consulted multiple times beforehand and even granted extra protection on her house, objected vocally in another incident that required a delay and police intervention.
‘They did not stop the rally. We called it on safety grounds, so they didn’t win by doing what they did,’ he said.
Other incidents involved people riding and even driving down the stages and coming out of gateways ‘whenever they wanted’.
‘It’s another situation of life or death, not only to them but to competitors,’ Mr Marshall added.
He also believed that there was deliberate interference to the communications systems throughout the event, while organisers also had to deal with persistent vandalism on Saturday afternoon’s Felconte stages.
‘The Felconte stages have been nothing but vandalised for the last four nights. We’ve had all the signings removed and snapped and chucked away, so somebody’s got to be accountable for that.
‘Once again, somebody went out deliberately to damage it, deliberately to cause fissions with the rally, because they’re just trying to put us on the back foot all the time – but it didn’t work.’
Saturday’s six morning stages ran relatively smoothly and with no significant delays or cancellations.
However, two stages had to be dropped from the afternoon schedule due to delays caused by crashes.
None of the few crashes that occurred during the rally were understood to have been particularly serious.
