POLICE controlling thousands of demonstrators had to rely on mobile phones to stay in contact after their radio system crashed, it has emerged.

Part way through Lancashire Police’s biggest ever operation on Saturday afternoon, its Airwave communications system failed.

While around 2,000 English Defence League members and 500 counter-demonstrators protested in the centre of Blackburn, officers were having to ring each other on mobile phones to pass on crucial information and intelligence.

It makes the huge success of the police operation, with only 12 arrests mainly for public order offences, even more impressive.

A police spokesman would not reveal how long the system was down for.

He said: “We did experience some issues with our radio system for a short period of time on Saturday, although this didn’t cause any significant problems.

“We plan for every eventuality thoroughly and this, coupled with ensuring that officers are fully briefed prior to large events, means that they know exactly what they need to do if communications systems are lost for a short while.

“We have a fall-back plan in place which meant the fault was rectified as soon as possible and that it had minimal impact on the overall policing operation.”

The Airwave system, which Lancashire was one of the first forces to pilot, was criticised at the recent Derrick Bird inquests in Cumbria.

An independent report by Simon Chesterman, Assistant Chief Constable of West Mercia Police, was presented to the inquest.

It said: “Time and time again with national large scale exercises and operations, Airwave lets us down.”

A spokesman for Airwave said: "At approximately 13:30hrs on Saturday 02nd April 2011, the Airwave Network Management Centre (NMC) received a call from Lancashire Constabulary to report that they were experiencing some service disruption within the Blackburn area.

"Airwave’s NMC despatched an engineer to the site, who quickly identified a faulty antenna as the root cause of the problem.

"Police officers in Blackburn experienced some disruption of communications during this time.

"At no time were control room communications lost, and the Airwave service remained stable for the rest of the Lancashire Constabulary area.

"The emergency services experienced no significant problems, and had minimal impact on policing of the day’s events.

"Airwave takes all of its network issues extremely seriously and our network management team were quick to work closely with our customers in the Lancashire Constabulary throughout."