By Bridget Johnson, your guide to Journalism

Today Beijing’s Olympic torch passed through London, where it was met with the fiercest anti-China protests yet. The British media is all over the story. First, from the Telegraph:

“The Daily Telegraph has learnt that organisers, including Chinese officials, discussed ‘pulling out’ of the day-long relay after just a few hours, as police fought running battles with wave after wave of anti-China protesters.


…The Chinese ambassador to Britain was forced into an unscheduled change to the location of her leg and, when the parade reached St Paul’s Cathedral - the focal point of pro-Tibet demonstrations - organisers told the torch bearer to retreat to a bus and drive past.


More than 2,000 police officers protected the flame’s passage, although one source said they were surprised by how ‘relentless’ the attempts were to disrupt the parade at ‘every corner’ of the route.”

They peg the number of protesters arrested at 37. The Times of London reports that the torch eventually made it to the prime minister’s residence:

“It was a public relations nightmare for London, with images of Tibetans pinned to the tarmac by police, and demonstrators waving placards outside Downing Street.


…Gordon Brown, ignoring calls to snub China for its crackdown on protests in Tibet, welcomed the Olympic flame behind Downing StreetÂ’s steel gates in front of a vetted crowd. Meanwhile, demonstrators and police clashed just yards away outside Parliament. The Prime Minister did not hold the torch, which was passed between the heptathlete Denise Lewis, and Ali Jawad, a paralympian, but posed for a picture with it after the posse of Beijing minders were eventually persuaded to stand aside.


Activists demonstrating against China’s human rights record have protested along the torch route since it began its 85,000-mile, 130-day odyssey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to Beijing for the opening ceremony on August 8. The global tour — the longest in Olympic history, meant as an illustration of China’s growing economic and political power — has offered pressure groups ample opportunity for protest.


There was trouble from the start of the eight-hour journey from Wembley to Greenwich yesterday. A protester lunged at the torch after Sir Steve Redgrave, the five times Olympic rowing champion, passed it to a schoolgirl.


As Colin Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, spoke of the torch ‘illuminating issues of concern’ in China, eight Free Tibet campaigners were arrested trying to board a relay bus. Pressed against the wall, they were told that they had breached the peace and would be released when the torch left for Paris last night.


In the crowd Tim Alrich, 40, a protester from Bermondsey, southeast London, said: ‘We know itÂ’s a sports event, but my first question would be why do the Olympics end up being held in China? The Olympics are all about participation and inclusiveness, but they are taking place in China, which is not a democracy.’”

I’ll be in San Francisco on Wednesday when the Olympic torch passes through on its only North American stop. Are protests expected? Absolutely.

(Photo by Yui Mok-Pool/Getty Images)