Garden House riot

[3] Protesters against the Greek junta, the 'Colonels' regime', gathered outside the hotels for several days, culminating with a crowd of several hundred protesters – mostly Cambridge University students organised by socialist groups – demonstrating against a Greek dinner for 120 guests being held in the River Suite at the Garden House Hotel from 7:30 pm on 13 February.

[4] The protesters picketed the venue – in a narrow cul-de-sac off Mill Lane, beside the River Cam – to discourage diners from entering.

The noisy crowd attempted to disrupt speeches inside, with a loudspeaker in a Fellow's room in neighbouring Peterhouse playing music by dissident Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis.

An attempt to break up the crowd using a fire hose played from a first floor window at the hotel failed, and violence broke out: the hotel was invaded and damaged (estimated at £2,276), one policeman was seriously injured, others received minor injuries, and a University pro-proctor, zoologist Dr Charles Burford Goodhart,[5] was struck by a half-brick and taken to hospital.

Six students were arrested on 13 February, and the university proctors provided the police with the names of approximately 60 people they had spotted in the crowd.

[14][15] The case remains a precedent for the legal principles that holding strong political views is no excuse for violent acts, that prosecuting only a few out of a number of potential defendants is permitted, that a defendant's individual acts should not be considered in isolation but must take their share of blame from the broader context of the disorder, and that encouraging or promoting disorder by words or actions is as culpable as participating in it.