wpjf blog

The SOCPA case against five activists who took part in the No More Fallujahs Weekend of action last October collapsed today at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court when judge Quentin Purdy found no case to answer and dismissed all charges against the five at the end of a protracted and at times farcical hearing which lasted almost four hours.

The five - Brian Barlow, Steve Barnes, Genny Bove, Rob Clohesey and David King - were all charged with taking part in an ‘unauthorised demonstration’ within the ‘designated area’ around Parliament on 29/30 October 2006. The cases had been joined together following a pre-trial hearing in May, where the five had agreed that they would not require any of the arresting/reporting police officers to be present at the trial.

Maybe the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had assumed that the case would therefore be a push-over and hadn’t bothered to prepare, or maybe they really are cracking under the strain of all those new laws and endless prosecutions. In any event, the prosecutor was ill-prepared for the case which she claimed to have only seen for the first time five minutes before the trial, and struggled to present a coherent prosecution from the six separate files piled up in front of her. She counted the defendants and then the files and then appealed to the magistrate that there were six files and only five defendants, having failed to notice that Steve was facing two charges.

To begin with, the defendants were all ushered - protesting - into the defendants’ box (behind a glass screen) to confirm names and addresses. Some of the five declined to give dates of birth, which went unremarked, thanks to Milan Rai’s and Maya Evans’ earlier stand on this, I guess. Standing in a glass box at the back of the court is not the best way to feel part of (or indeed hear) the proceedings against you, so the five vociferously expressed their wish to be seated in the main courtroom, which was agreed and turned out to be much more satisfactory. All the defendants represented themselves.

Before the case began, Genny asked to make a submission that to proceed with the case would be unlawful and an abuse of process, drawing on rulings from the European Court of Human Rights which talk about the need for any restrictions on the right to freedom of expression to be tightly drawn, with clear processes, foreseeable consequences and so on, and pointed to the duty of the magistrates court to stop the case going ahead given SOCPA’s complete lack of process for its ‘unwritten law’.

Rather surprisingly to the defendants, who were expecting to be silenced at the earliest opportunity, Genny was given time not only to make the submission in full, but also to give some examples of the problems that have arisen in the past due to SOCPA’s shortcomings in this area. The prosecutor asked for time to go and dig out the caselaw to respond to this submission and asked if there was anything else the defendants wanted to raise so she could deal with that at the same time. Genny stood up again and outlined an argument, based on information contained in the CPS’s website, that the ‘public interest’ test for bringing a prosecution could not possibly have been met, and that such a prosecution would do nothing to reduce crime, would not increase public confidence in the criminal justice system, nor be value for money. This also gave an opportunity for us to talk a little about the events we’d taken part in, our motivation and our dismay that we were being treated as criminals for remembering the dead. After that there was an adjournment for the prosecutor to scurry around and for the defendants to take a breather, before it was back in for round 2.

Read the rest of the court report here and letters to the press here.

A couple of weeks back I received a summons for taking part, last October, in an unauthorised demonstration in a public place, namely opposite Downing Street, Whitehall, SW1, in a designated area, when authorisation under section 134(2) of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005 had not been given when the demonstration started.

SOCPA has removed the right to protest within a kilometre of Parliament, and has replaced it with the right to protest in this area only with prior police authorisation, the police being able to set conditions on the place and duration of the demonstration, the size of banners and the number of people who may protest.  This picture sums up my feelings about SOCPA.  I’ve had some correspondence with MP Steve Pound about SOCPA after hearing his defence of the Act on Radio 4 just after Christmas.

Anyway, I did take part in an unauthorised Peace Camp in Parliament Square last October.  It took the Crown Prosecution Service six months to decide that it was in the public interest to prosecute under SOCPA, but now they have, and I’ve got a provisional court date of 14 September.  I’m planning to plead not guilty because I cannot accept that it is a criminal offence (serious organised criminal offence, even) to remember the British soldiers who have died in Iraq by reading out their names in a solemn remembrance ceremony, even if I choose to do that outside Downing Street without asking for police permission.

I’ve written an article for indymedia about the court cases to date, which you can read here.  

• who has been camped in Parliament Square for nearly 6 years in protest at the effect of our government’s foreign policy on ordinary people in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere;
• who, along with his supporters, has been subject to the most appalling oppression by the police;
• who has had a law, SOCPA, drafted specifically to try and get rid of him;
• who has recently won several court battles against the police interpretation of this law;
• whose display was stolen in the night by police and has now been re-created as an art exhibition in Tate Britain

has won Channel 4’s "Most Inspiring Political Figure Award" for 2007 with a massive 54% of the total vote.
 
In his acceptance speech, Brian said:
 
"I would like to say a warm thank you to everyone who voted for me. This is a vote against this government’s killing, maiming, torture, stealing. It’s a vote for the children of Iraq and Afghanistan, for all our children - our future. For truth, justice, peace and democracy for all."
 
Mysteriously (Fix!), Tony Blair was also amongst the shortlisted candidates, but polled just 8% of the vote.  Inspiring political figure?  Don’t make me laugh.

 

 
It’s about time Blair & co. caught up with public opinion.  Put a stop to the ongoing police harassment of Brian and his friends and listen to what they’re saying.  It’s a sad state of affairs when we have a war criminal for prime minister while people who try to draw attention to these war crimes are criminalised.  Freedom and democracy?  You decide.
 
 

Milan Rai and Maya Evans naming the dead 

Listening to the Today Programme on Radio 4 often makes me angry, and the other day was no exception.  Radio 4 is running its "Christmas Repeal", where a panel draws up a shortlist of legislation listeners feel should be repealed, and listeners get to vote on the shortlist.  One of the candidates this year is the notorious Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.  Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty was speaking on Today for the repeal of this Act, while Stephen Pound, Labour MP, was speaking against. 

Pound was supposed to be defending the Act, but ended up saying that it should not have been used to convict Maya Evans and Milan Rai for reading out the names of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers who’ve died in Iraq… in essence he was trying to pass off these convictions as a minor aberration in what is otherwise a sound piece of legislation.  But of course it isn’t. 

Maya and Mil’s appeals to the High Court against their convictions have recently been turned down.  Worse still, in spite of widespread condemnation of the convictions - including in the mainstream media - both have now been charged again under the Act for organising and taking part in an "unauthorised" demonstration within 1km of Parliament last October (reading out the names of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers who have died in Iraq).  If convicted of organising the demonstration, Maya and Mil could face both a fine and up to 51 weeks in prison.  The Act has been used (and indeed was designed) to try and suppress the free speech of protester Brian Haw and his supporters in Parliament Square.  Many acts of violence by the police have been carried out in its name.

I have written to the Today Programme and Stephen Pound to ask what he thinks about this, which is probably not going to achieve very much but it did make me feel a bit better.  My correspondence with Steve Pound is here.