By sanctioning coercive police tactics, the courts are robbing us all of the right to voice dissent
The trial of Alfie Meadows, the student who needed emergency surgery after allegedly being hit on the head with a police baton at a student protest on 9 December 2010, begins today. Meadows was charged with violent disorder following the demonstration and will plead not guilty in a case that could determine the future of the right to public protest in Britain.
Although the specific facts of the case are not yet determined, cases like these raise the concern that each guilty verdict serves as a green light to the police to continue to use coercive "crowd control" tactics at public demonstrations.
Horse charges, riot police, batons and kettling have been deployed to deal with protesters with increasing frequency. This oppressive policing of protest increases the risk of injury to those exercising their right to voice dissent; their subsequent criminalisation is an attack on the right to public protest itself. The situation has not been helped by a recent judgment from the European court of human rights that declared the kettling of protesters and passersby at the 2001 May Day demonstrations did not deprive them of their right to liberty. While the court accepted the police argument that the kettle needed to be prolonged due to the violent behaviour of a minority after the kettle's formation, at no point did the court consider that the coercion entailed in creating and maintaining the kettle might itself have caused the violence.
The sanctioning by the courts of coercive police tactics is particularly worrying in light of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service's record of charging protesters with serious offences, such as violent disorder. As anyone who has taken part in public protest knows, the police are not neutral observers but actively relate to those they are policing. If their tactics antagonise protesters, this needs to be borne in mind when any violence that may result is considered. The criminalisation of protest has been aided by the director of public prosecution's recent guidelines on prosecuting protesters, which fail to account for the role of the police in prompting violence at demonstrations through tactics such as kettling, the use of batons, agents provocateurs and undercover policing.
In the wake of the student protests against the cuts to higher education funding, the rise in tuition fees and the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, we have seen the imprisonment of at least 20 protesters.
Art student James Heslip was sentenced to 12 months for smashing a window; Zenon Mitchell, 15 months for throwing a placard stick; Omar Ibrahim, 18 months for throwing a joke-shop smoke bomb in the direction of Top Shop. Sara El-Sheekh was acquitted of violent disorder after a jury heard that she had kicked in already broken glass windows to protect protesters moving in and out of Millbank at the 10 November 2010 student demo. The pattern of prosecutions, convictions and harsh and exemplary sentences points towards a policy of criminalising dissent.
As a magistrate who convicted another group of Fortnum & Masons protesters said himself, "History often vindicates those involved in such acts."
The police and the courts are being used to stifle dissent at a time when the government is pushing through massively unpopular legislation, while at the same time facing new methods of organising and new forms of protest. Ten more Fortnum & Masons UK Uncut protesters have just been convicted of aggravated trespass for a protest described as "sensible" by a senior police officer at the scene – the same kind of protest that recently forced the government to retreat over workfare.
The courts must resist being a platform for the attack on the right to protest.
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