Police Should Leave Anti-Monarchist Protestors Alone
Brendan O’Neill has written a piece for the Spectator protesting agains the police’s arrest of various anti-monarchist protestors over the weekend (and today). It begins:
No one should ever be arrested for what they think or say. It is remarkable – and depressing – that this still needs to be said in the 21st century. But it seems it does.
Over the weekend we witnessed an alarming, almost medieval act of censorship. A woman was dragged away by cops for holding up a sign that said “Abolish the monarchy”. It was an intolerable assault on freedom of speech.
The woman in question was standing outside St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, which was awaiting the arrival of the Queen’s coffin. Mournful crowds had gathered. But this woman wasn’t in the mood for mourning. She was in the mood for politics. Her sign, in full, said: “Fuck imperialism. Abolish the monarchy.”
“Officers appeared behind her,” says one news report, and “took her away”. They arrested her. Remind me what century this is? Someone being hauled off by the law for expressing anti-monarchist sentiments – it’s like something out of the 1500s.
Now, we can agree that the sorrowful occasion of the late monarch’s arrival at St Giles’ Cathedral is not the right time or place to make political statements. It is infantile, and certainly uncaring, to hold up an expletive-laden placard bashing the monarchy in a crowd of mourners for the monarch. It’s a lefty version of what those loons in the Westboro Baptist Church do. They, too, hijack funereal events to make their showy statements.
But so what? We either have freedom of speech – that is, the right to express ourselves in the public realm – or we do not.
What’s more, the woman held up her sign a few moments before the public proclamation of Charles III as the new king. If people are not allowed to quietly, if offensively, protest against the proclamation of a king, then clearly our country is not as free as we thought. Declaring a king is a political, constitutional act – citizens ought to have every right to dissent at such an event.
There appear to have been other acts of anti-republican censorship over the past 24 hours. A man in Oxford says he was arrested after shouting out “Who elected him?” as that city marked the accession of Charles III. He seems to have been arrested under the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. That act has “significantly reduced free expression and harmed democracy”, the man told the Independent. He’s not wrong.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Andrew Marr, Guido Fawkes and the Free Speech Union have all strongly condemned these attempts by the police to interfere with people’s right to protest, however distasteful the protest is. You can read the FSU’s statement about the recent arrests on Twitter.
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As bloody usual plod “policing” something which definitely DOES NOT require their attention.
I am looking forward to a report advising us that the police have caught a house burglar or a car thief – crikey that would make the headlines.
What we need to know is who has given the orders for this sort of police action? Is Chucky throwing his weight about already?
Once again stopped by the police last night for walking over a bridge in the dead of the night. Some guy told me he was afraid I could come to harm when crossing over an empty street (granted, it’s a dual carriageway called A329 but as there’s essentially no traffic there at 1am, this doesn’t really matter). They seem to have an endless amount of time for nonsense like that.
“Excuse me sir…papers please….”
Not far off that scary scenario.
I’ve had that already. That was supposedly because someone in the area was damaging parked cars or – more realistic suspicion – some moron living in the vicinity had seen me walking past his parked car and called the police because of that. Better don’t trust those … pedestrians … they’re surely up to something that’s absolutely not good!
🙂
It’s the way they circle their prey, clutching at their radios (for instructions ‘cos they sort of need them) as if the person is a bomb about to go off. Is this meant to give me confidence that the police are doing their jobs? Three or four overweight overdressed monkeys (sorry monkeys) for one person holding a placard, ‘they’ don’t like?
How many police did it take ??
I could imagine the charge might be ‘a breach of the peace’ if they were shouting, but if the protester were silent then anyone shouting at her may be breaching the peace.
Perhaps the police will claim it was to protect the woman from assault by others, but again, if so, surely those doing the assaulting would be liable for arrest.
But ‘freedom of speech’ must also be taken in context, i.e. the shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded place argument. It does not trump every other law.
I would not infringe any persons right to protest against the monarchy on any normal day – but to do so when thousands are mourning deserved a good Glasgow Kiss IMO so the police where correct to treat it as a breach of the peace.
In summary: anyone should be able to call the King a c***t if they so wished under normal circumstances and their free speech right applies. But there are circumstances where it can be a breech of the law, and the right to free speech does not trump that.
Ideally the police would have told the protester to move on, they too need to ensure their response is proportionate to the situation. An immediate arrest seems to fail that test here, but that will be for a court to decide.
I beg to differ here: Thousands of people gathering in a public location to do X shoudln’t preclude anyone from doing the opposite of X visibly closeby. The public location is still a public location, hence, everybody has a right to do everything which isn’t legally prohibited there.
Absolutely right, and we employ the police to deter people from kicking off and physically attacking each other, and arrest them/prevent them from doing so if they do.
Don’t be silly. You can’t stand up in a cinema and shout “Fire” or Alu hu Akbar.
A cinema is not a public location and anybody shouting in one will surely find himself in front of it rather sooner than later. Further, a wrongful fire alarm in enclosed location is not speech.
Stop wriggling.
Stop posting silly stuff if you want to avoid people pointing out that the silly stuff you posted was silly.
As explained, for obvious reasons you can’t be a nutter. If thousands of Muslims are in a public place commemorating this or that crazy cranks like you can’t wave placards saying FUCK ISLAM or FUCK BIG MO! It’s for your own good, you dope. Now stop being silly, you’re only proving my point.
Who decides what constitutes “normal circumstances”? The government? The courts? You trust either body after what’s happened with covid? I don’t.
There should always be room for interpretation, the officer has a judgment call to make and that’s why we have ‘innocent until proved guilty’ as well.
Article written by a Canadian expressing his views on the new monarch & all the theatre which follows it. Plus it provides information which can explain that Charlie serves to profit from the net zero crap he keeps promoting. So much for the political independence & neutrality of the monarch…
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/09/no_author/can-britain-break-from-feudalism-or-will-king-charles-great-reset-go-unchallenged/
His estate will make a killing out of off shore wind turbines. Just the existence of them on site, whether they work or not, as they are on the Crown estate.
Half an hour ago, Al Jazeera broadcast a little clip of a similar indecent in Edinburgh, in which a protester was arrested by the Police. The latter apparently said that it was done to protect the protester against the general public. On the same programme, the presenter in Doha interviewed their journalist in Edinburgh, and he observed that there is a fair bit of pro-independence there (as many will know), so it’s understandable that not all of the population wants to get involved with the ceremonial process this afternoon, and no surprise that there are actually some real “free speech” protestors out and about (if they want to risk it, perhaps).
minor typing error; meant to say “similar incident”.
I’m a strong supporter of free-speech, but when does that tip over into pure narcisism. Shouting abuse at people accompanying the body of their recently deceased Mother? Yes, I think so. I don’t think that arrests are in order, but what used to be known and respected as ‘a quiet word in their shell-like’ by the police. Of course the problem is that it isn’t ‘respected’ any more. The Police lost the respect of the public years ago. What we are really witnessing is the manifestation of saying anything you want, regardless of ‘social boundaries’, because there aren’t any. Online, you can have all kinds of offensive ideas but they wont get you a punch in the face or a grab by the collar, as you might get doing it in the street or a pub for example. Therefore these informal social boundaries are never tested. The concept of ‘not the time or the place’ doesn’t come in to it, not any feeling of empathy for other human beings that might lead you to keep your thoughts to yourself. If you can’t get good attention, then bad attention will do, in fact in many ways bad attention is to be… Read more »
“Fuck imperialism. Abolish the monarchy“
Isn’t the problem here the f word? Is that what breaches the peace?
If the sign had said ‘No more Imperialism. Abolish the monarchy.’, would that be a problem?
Surely it’s been established in law by now whether displays of the f word in such circumstances are legal?
If I want to go out and about wearing a ‘Fuck You’ tee shirt is that allowed? (I often feel like doing just this.)
Genuine questions here.
I think you’re right. It’s the aggressive tone of such a message and I guess in a crowd of mourners, such sentiments probably don’t go down that well. To be honest, it’s not the ideal sign to hold up in not the ideal location or time. Anyone doing this should expect some reaction whether it’s the police moving you on – normal response – to being arrested (bit over the top). What such an action does though is send a message to the rest of the country that protesting against the monarchy is a potential crime and that’s the danger.
Yeah sure we should all have the right to go down Brick Lane to the mosque waving our placards saying FUCK ISLAM, and NOT MY PROPHET, and ABOLISH ISLAM. Yeah sure, Brendan, that’d be a great
idea. Freedom of speech innit. Doh!
Well, you have that right or should really have it.
People used to have things like tact and common sense.
Use of the word ‘Fuck’ on a sign is an offence, IIRC. The sign was disrespectful and ill-mannered. Not a serious crime, but there’s a time and a place for things. The protestor could have been moved on quietly and told she was welcome to return in a couple of hours. The leftists running the police service don’t know how to police patriotic events, because they hate everything patriotic, so they’ll use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
And frankly, parading ‘Fuck imperialism! Abolish the Monarchy!’ when thousands of people clearly care about the Queen it is not going to do the republican cause any good at all: it makes them look like yobs. There was nothing brave about brandishing the sign: it was narcissistic, spiteful and wrong.
But not worthy of arrest unless the person persisted in brandishing the sign.
Use of the word ‘Fuck’ on a sign is an offence, IIRC.
That’s what I thought (but am not sure) – see my post above.
I think your post brings out some very important points.
There’s a very interesting point here, about the limits of free speech. Of course there are limits to freedom of speech, just as there are to freedom of action.
I’d like to read an article which discusses this.
The sign in itself is just stupid. Whoever held it could as well have been holding one saying I‘m a moron.
If what happened to the owner of the Scottish chippy is anything to go they might have done her a favour.
I don’t understand how this is a distasteful protest? The Queen cannot be offended now she is dead.