Actual meaning: London police menacingly carried truncheons (billy clubs) as weapons.

Witnesses said some students initially resisted the soldiers, who carried automatic weapons, truncheons, and tear-gas canisters.

They carried black truncheons and small cylindrical green boxes on their web belts.

Some of the security officers are seen carrying sticks, truncheons and shields.

But several of them carried heavy truncheons, almost maces, wherever they went.

Me boss has his very own police, the fight stewards what wears red armbands and carries truncheons, and they ain't reluctant to use 'em either.

They were forbidden to marry, were paid less than men, and were not allowed to carry truncheons.

It has also balked at demands from police associations that officers be allowed to carry 24-inch-long, American-style side-handle truncheons.

In the Victorian era, police in London carried truncheons about one-foot long called billy clubs.

Until the mid-1990s, British police officers carried traditional wooden truncheons of a sort that had changed little from Victorian times.