Later in the day an intervention was made by some of those who had been involved with the autonomous spaces during a meeting on anti-fascism. They intended to invade the stage during the speech of the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone (who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 but is a member of the Labour Party which supported it). In fact, Ken Livingstone had already decided not to speak at the event. His decision has been attributed by the National Assembly Against Racism to threats from anarchists but the intervention went ahead. The SWP's Weyman Bennett, a steering member of Unite Against Fascism and chair of the meeting, claimed that he was assaulted by an anarchist. A banner was hung up stating "Ken's Party - War Party" and the stage was turned into an open-microphone event with speeches against the 'vertical' organisation of the ESF, the war in Iraq, and recent attacks on freedom of speech by the FBI (such as taking Indymedia servers down with international articles). After the intervention, the originally planned meeting about anti-fascism went ahead but with a reduced audience. These events echoed the attempts by anarchists to attack French Socialist Party speakers in the Paris forum, an attack that was stopped by security.