VIDEO footage circulated on social media at the weekend showed Greater Manchester Police (GMP) forcing Gypsy and Traveller children out of the city centre and onto a train.

In one video, a distressed young man shouted: “I don’t know where I’m going!” as a row of police lined the platform and forced them onto a carriage. 

One girl, 13 and from Doncaster — ended up more than 100 miles away from Manchester in Grimsby, her mother reported.

The children are understood to have been attending Christmas markets.

GMP had issued a Section 34 dispersal order in the area “to prevent anti-social behaviour.”

The Friends, Families and Travellers charity said the actions were “a serious example of how structural racism sustains the ‘cradle to grave’ policing pipeline of Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities.”

Kevin Blowe, campaigns co-ordinator for Netpol, said it demonstrates how “sweeping dispersal powers based on ‘intelligence’ of anti-social behaviour are a terrifying restriction on people’s freedom.” 

He said: “A senior officer saying he understands how those affected feel about their mistreatment isn’t helpful, it’s insulting.” 

Anti-stop-and-search campaign Stop Watch executive director Habib Kadiri said: “Two years on from coming out of special measures, GMP’s operations still rely on discriminatory policing tactics. 

“Surely the mayor — who is the de facto police and crime commissioner for the region — will not tolerate the mass racial profiling of GRT children on their watch?”

Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor Kate Green has called for an investigation into the footage.