A long but important thread to read
 

What this threads tells you that if you disagree with me TWICE in this thread I have legal recourse to have you arrested.

No seriously. I can.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1584114,00.html

Protest is criminalised and the huffers and puffers say nothing

The police abuse terror and harassment laws to penalise dissent while we
insist civil liberties are our gift to the world

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 4, 2005
The Guardian

'We are trying to fight 21st-century crime - antisocial behaviour, drug
dealing, binge drinking, organised crime - with 19th-century methods, as if
we still lived in the time of Dickens." Tony Blair, September 27 2005.

"Down poured the wine like oil on blazing fire. And still the riot went on -
the debauchery gained its height - glasses were dashed upon the floor by
hands that could not carry them to lips, oaths were shouted out by lips
which could scarcely form the words to vent them in; drunken losers cursed
and roared; some mounted on the tables, waving bottles above their heads and
bidding defiance to the rest; some danced, some sang, some tore the cards
and raved. Tumult and frenzy reigned supreme ..." Nicholas Nickleby, by
Charles Dickens, 1839.

All politicians who seek to justify repressive legislation claim that they
are responding to an unprecedented threat to public order. And all
politicians who cite such a threat draft measures in response which can just
as easily be used against democratic protest. No act has been passed over
the past 20 years with the aim of preventing antisocial behaviour,
disorderly conduct, trespass, harassment and terrorism that has not also
been deployed to criminalise a peaceful public engagement in politics. When
Walter Wolfgang was briefly detained by the police after heckling the
foreign secretary last week, the public caught a glimpse of something that a
few of us have been vainly banging on about for years.

On Friday, six students and graduates of Lancaster University were convicted
of aggravated trespass. Their crime was to have entered a lecture theatre
and handed out leaflets to the audience. Staff at the university were
meeting people from BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Shell, the Carlyle Group,
GlaxoSmithKline, DuPont, Unilever and Diageo, to learn how to "commercialise
university research". The students were hoping to persuade the researchers
not to sell their work. They were in the theatre for three minutes. As the
judge conceded, they tried neither to intimidate anyone nor to stop the
conference from proceeding.

They were prosecuted under the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, passed when
Michael Howard was the Conservative home secretary. But the university was
able to use it only because Labour amended the act in 2003 to ensure that it
could be applied anywhere, rather than just "in the open air".

Had Mr Wolfgang said "nonsense" twice during the foreign secretary's speech,
the police could have charged him under the Protection from Harassment Act
1997. Harassment, the act says, "must involve conduct on at least two
occasions ... conduct includes speech". Parliament was told that its purpose
was to protect women from stalkers, but the first people to be arrested were
three peaceful protesters. Since then it has been used by the arms
manufacturer EDO to keep demonstrators away from its factory gates, and by
Kent police to arrest a woman who sent an executive at a drugs company two
polite emails, begging him not to test his products on animals. In 2001 the
peace campaigners Lindis Percy and Anni Rainbow were prosecuted for causing
"harassment, alarm or distress" to American servicemen at the Menwith Hill
military intelligence base in Yorkshire, by standing at the gate holding the
Stars and Stripes and a placard reading "George W Bush? Oh dear!" In Hull a
protester was arrested under the act for "staring at a building".

Had Mr Wolfgang said "nonsense" to one of the goons who dragged him out of
the conference, he could have been charged under section 125 of the Serious
Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which came into force in August.
Section 125 added a new definition of harassment to the 1997 act, "a course
of conduct ... which involves harassment of two or more persons". What this
means is that you need only address someone once to be considered to be
harassing them, as long as you have also addressed someone else in the same
manner. This provision, in other words, can be used to criminalise any
protest anywhere. But when the bill passed through the Commons and the
Lords, no member contested or even noticed it.

Section 125 hasn't yet been exercised, but section 132 of the act is already
becoming an effective weapon against democracy. This bans people from
demonstrating in an area "designated" by the government. One of these areas
is the square kilometre around parliament. Since the act came into force,
democracy campaigners have been holding a picnic in Parliament Square every
Sunday afternoon (see www1.atwiki.com/picnic/). Seventeen people have been
arrested so far.

But the law that has proved most useful to the police is the one under which
Mr Wolfgang was held: section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This allows them
to stop and search people without the need to show that they have
"reasonable suspicion" that a criminal offence is being committed. They have
used it to put peaceful protesters through hell. At the beginning of 2003,
demonstrators against the impending war with Iraq set up a peace camp
outside the military base at Fairford in Gloucestershire, from which US B52s
would launch their bombing raids. Every day - sometimes several times a day
- the protesters were stopped and searched under section 44. The police,
according to a parliamentary answer, used the act 995 times, though they
knew that no one at the camp was a terrorist. The constant harassment and
detention pretty well broke the protesters' resolve. Since then the police
have used the same section to pin down demonstrators outside the bomb depot
at Welford in Berkshire, at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston,
at Menwith Hill and at the annual arms fair in London's Docklands.

The police are also rediscovering the benefits of some of our more venerable
instruments. On September 10, Keith Richardson, one of the six students
convicted of aggravated trespass on Friday, had his stall in Lancaster city
centre confiscated under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. "Every Person wandering
abroad and endeavouring by the Exposure of Wounds and Deformities to obtain
or gather Alms ... shall be deemed a Rogue and Vagabond... " The act was
intended to prevent the veterans of the Napoleonic wars from begging, but
the police decided that pictures of the wounds on this man's
anti-vivisection leaflets put him on the wrong side of the law. In two
recent cases, protesters have been arrested under the 1361 Justices of the
Peace Act. So much for Mr Blair's 21st century methods.

What is most remarkable is that until Mr Wolfgang was held, neither
parliamentarians nor the press were interested. The pressure group Liberty,
the Green party, a couple of alternative comedians, the Indymedia network
and the alternative magazine Schnews have been left to defend our civil
liberties almost unassisted. Even after "Wolfie" was thrown out of the
conference, public criticism concentrated on the suppression of dissent
within the Labour party, rather than the suppression of dissent throughout
the country. As the parliamentary opposition falls apart, the
extra-parliamentary one is being closed down with hardly a rumble of protest
from the huffers and puffers who insist that civil liberties are Britain's
gift to the world. Perhaps they're afraid they'll be arrested

Very interesting article Kieran can you pm it to Mr Lewis who seems to have gone into hiding over the Wolfgang debacle

What would be the legal position of websites like this then? Every day brings a new FFS and general disagreement with the government - should I expect the knock on my door anytime soon......?

One of the feds on here gave us an explanation of what happens if you sue for false arrest or malicious prosecution, to indicate when it would or wouldn't be appropriate - I don't find it, would it be appropriate in this case?

given the fact that students have been prosecuted for handing out leaflets, I would have to say yes.

Of course it means that these people that accost you in the street for market surveys could be arrested as well.... ;)

Hmmmmm - and how about the people who phone me while I'm in the bath to sdee if I'm interested in Double Glazing or new guttering.....?

<begining to think it's not all bad.....>

I disagree with that.

I still disagree.

Right, so, that's me disagreeing with you twice :p ;) Bring it on.


BTW, if you disagree by standing by what you're saying, that I disagree with incidentally, then you're disagreeing with me so I'm gonna have you arrested too :p :D

Stop harrassing him!!! :D

Would be funny if loads of people phoned up the police for harrassment charges, they could hardly do you for wasting police time if they use the same laws themselves, perhaps you could get the police arrested for disagreeing with you lol!! :D

I wish we could get this organised on a grand, grand scale, give the Dibble something else to do besides sit behind speed cameras all day:mad:

I'd LOVE to see 'em try to wriggle out of it too.

Alcazar

Interesting...

As regards the Protection from Harassment Act, there has been legal precedent set that it only applies to individuals and does not cover organisations or companies.

I was shown the paperwork by my Brother in Law (solicitor) as I was considering my legal position while...err...harassing someone a couple of years ago.

My dispute was with the legal representatives of the organisations I had disagreement with, as opposed to the individual.

I dont see why this still shouldn't apply.

I also see why they may try it on anyway.

Asif

It really has come to something when the Guardian critisises the Labour Government!

It matters not whether you are Left or Right.
Piece by piece, what we had thought of as our rights in this country, are being eroded.
Note how the Police are complicit in all this.
They now, do not serve us, they only serve the State.
Dark times imho.

Working URL - very scarey :eek:

mb

Thanks for that interesting piece Kieran, might go some way to illustrating what some have been warning us about for a while now and who have been shouted down by others.

Les

A good read :thumb:

Never thought I would say that about the Guardian! :eek:

Is it the ultimate in political correctness - not being able to disagree with anything?

Paraphrasing an oft remembered quote: "All evil need do to succeed is for a good man to do nothing"

Or "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Just think - if you protest about anything now, you can be arrested and convicted. I can't help but think that the European court of Human rights is going to be involved in this.

We can but hope.:(

Alcazar

BTW: e-mailed that article to a couple of friends in the Labour party. I'll be seeing them at the pub-quiz tonite, so I'll post their response tomorrow....should be interesting.

Alcazar

thanks for that :) That'll teach me not to check when pasting from Hotmail (where I got to hear about it first)

...

got bored during opening sentence

Holy thread revival Batman (and you could've atleast made a proper comment in doing so).

weirdly I didn't do that, I've never seen this thread before :wonder:

I'm going to guess this has come from the app, or mobile site.

A glitch in the Matrix.