My good friend Kiron Reid sent this as a comment to my post last weekend about the Edd Bauer case. It raises some specific points about Liberal Democrat Conferences, but a more important wider point: should a party founded above all on tolerance not be speaking out more to defend the right to peaceful protest?
Gareth,
Thank you for sharing this. I am relieved that Edd Bauer now has bail. I am intrigued to know what the arrest was for? The police have routinely in the past used over heavy handed and disruptive tactics against Fathers for Justice campaigners, deliberately to be disruptive in my view, but then that is also what FfJ wanted to achieve. I teach low level police powers and am struggling to see an offence that would have been appropriate (as opposed to thinking about powers that the police could – but could have decided not to – use).
I was amused when restrictions on protest were used at Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool last year against the Labour and trade union demonstrators that voted for the Government that did more to restrict the right to peaceful protest than any other. I was appalled when I saw the ‘ring of steel’ at Sheffield (via photos from Richard Clein) and assumed that the Liberal Democrats only allowed that excessive level of police control because they were taken by surprise. I assumed that the party at the highest level would insist on freer movement in Birmingham and less authoritarian policing. Thus I was very disappointed that, with one exception, it was a grassroots campaign in the party that saw the danger of pandering to police controls when the police bureaucracy will almost always propose what is convenient for the police! A Liberal party should have it’s conference in a tent in a field if the police won’t let them organise it the way they want, due to the ubiquitous but never specific terrorist threat. It was ironic at Liverpool that the police used the excuse that they had to restrict protest because the conference venue was private land – but it was private land controlled by the then Liberal Democrat council’s partner company, a venue built by public money, and the local Council should have used pressure to allow more, not less, protest (albeit the protests by students and trade unionists were quite small).
What could be done specifically in Edd’s case? It is ironic that a CPS lawyer will have objected to bail – ironic when the DPP, Keir Starmer, is one of the leading civil liberties lawyers of the age. I think polite suggestions to the CPS West Midlands that they should have prioritised allowing peaceful protest would be a course of action. Yes, the Home Secretary cannot interfere in operational policing but yes Liberal Democrat ministers and MPs and peers can make it quite clear to the police authorities at the highest level that they welcome peaceful protest. The police in the West Midlands and at ACPO level should be told to allow protest unless it specifically involves criminal offences or satisfies the tests in the Public Order Act 1986 that would allow restrictions.
Kiron Reid, lecturer in law,
University of Liverpool.
He was arrested for unfurling a banner above a very busy road. which is obviously a danger.have a lok at the picture here
http://www.redbrickpaper.co.uk/2011/09/edward-bauer-vpe-arrested/
We all know that. It certainly doesn’t justify 10 days’ detention without trial, though.
Unless your name is John Reid, that is.
Simon,
Many thanks for that link, I hadn’t seen that one. I’m impressed by Redbrick, it is one of the best student newspapers that I have seen. I looked up a few of the stories and noted the specific offence. Despite being a criminal law lecturer I either did not realise or had forgotten about that one. My point is that the the police could have decided to warn not prosecute even if they weren’t likely to simply do nothing. Many of us in the Liberal Democrats would think the best response would have been to let the protest carry on for a reasonable time.
The offence is Causing danger to road-users. (Discussed here: http://www.redbrickpaper.co.uk/2011/09/vpe-edd-bauer-makes-bail/ ). The key words in fact are “obvious to a reasonable person that to do so would be dangerous”. There are clearly widely different views on this act of Edd’s, as the debate in the comments on Redbrick show. So the police could have used discretion. At the same time one might argue that reasonable cause includes peaceful protest but those kind of defences are virtually impossible to reply on in English law due in part to the inefficacy of the European Convention on Human Rights.
>Simon McG – “… obviously a danger … ”
Don’t be ridiculous! That’s pure sophistry. I note the Redbrick article talks about debris falling but gives no details so it’s as likely to be a bit of string or fragments of cloth as anything else that could be used as an excuse. It’s serious and unjustifiable police overreaction to legitimate protest.