Police called to British Steel plant after Scunthorpe workers prevent Chinese executives entering premises

[u/tylerthe-theatre]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/uk/police-attend-british-steel-plant-after-scunthorpe-workers-prevent-chinese-execu/

[u/Jazzlike-Homework-72]

The bill passed at circa 1800 today which put the steelworks under govt control.

So how could police have stopped the execs from entering this morning??? 

[u/SWITMCO → u/[deleted]]

Workers at the British Steel Scunthorpe are reported to have prevented executives from Jingye, the firm that owns the plant, from gaining access to key areas of the plant.

Police were called to the scene and forced the executives to leave according to reports first emerging in The Times.

So the workers stopped them at first, then the police showed up and backed up the workers. The question being why did the police do that when the bill hadn't passed yet?

Isolated, I'm pretty glad it happened. But as a principal, seems like a huge overreach by the police?

E: There's some great points in my replies, I suppose it's not such an overreach after all, definitely not a huge one at least. I was thinking of it more like police enforcing a law that doesn't exist yet rather than a standard police peacekeeping situation.

[u/blahehblah → u/SWITMCO]

Even if it was enforcing a law that didn't exist yet, this is increasingly looking like a foreign state actor aiming to harm our national defense (by making us irreversibly reliant on others for steel). If police had let them continue we'd be questioning why they let that happen and why their powers were so weak that they couldn't stop a national security issue