He apparently wasn't carrying the knives due to his illness, he was carrying them because he'd just been instructing a Taekwondo demo.
If he was acting suspiciously, for whatever reason, and I guess attending an event with low security, standing next to a load of protesters, carrying several fake knives plus a real one and looking like he wasn't out there as a spectator is reason enough for at least a good look.
This is apparently his own brother's account:
Quote
Mark had served in Northern Ireland and appreciates full well the stresses involved in assessing responses in tense situations. He was concerned that the newspaper reports (It was in the Guardian as well) were reflecting this as a case of police brutality which, if the full background were known, it would be apparent it was not.
The group of protesters near where he was standing were from Fathers 4 Justice (groan from my Family Law lecturer sister sitting alongside me). To make matters worse, a woman protester next to him trying to join the other demonstrators and who was haranguing the police as imperialist lackeys, etc, looked as if she was with him.
“This is all going to kick off” he thought, and he needed to get to his daughter’s birthday. With that he jumped off the wall to leave. Bad move, worse timing, open to misinterpretation. When he was jumped on, he tried to say he had been to a Taekwondo demonstration and needed to get to his daughter. What the police heard, in the presumably noisy environment, (said the brother), was “demonstration” and “getting to his daughter”- a reasonable impression of a Father 4 justice with access issues.
He would be grateful if I could convey to others a more rounded perspective.
Because I don't know the details surrounding his arrest (such as how he reacted when he was approached), I've no real issue with this event in itself. He wasn't just arrested for not smiling.
The truly sad thing about this is that it's the world we now live in, and events innocenter than this are only going to increase in frequency.