U.K. Supreme Court in Firing Line for Ludicrous Ruling Giving Protestors “Lawful Excuse” to Block Roads
Supreme Court judges have been blamed for giving the green light to eco-zealots to cause mayhem on Britain’s roads as Just Stop Oil are understood to be exploiting an extraordinary 2021 legal ruling that protests can be a “lawful excuse” to block roads. The Mail has the story.
The ruling followed the prosecution of four anti-arms trade protesters who blocked a road leading to the ExCel Centre while it hosted an arms fair in September 2017.
In June 2021 the Supreme Court, established by Tony Blair’s Labour Government, reversed a High Court decision and overturned the protesters’ convictions.
It ruled that protesters can have a “lawful excuse” defence under the European Convention of Human Rights against the offence of obstructing a highway, even where they have used “deliberately physically obstructive conduct”.
The so-called “Ziegler” ruling, named after Nora Ziegler, one of the protesters, was hailed at the time by campaign group Extinction Rebellion.
It is understood that protesters are briefed about the ruling before they block motorways and trunk roads in a bid to cause traffic chaos.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told the Mail: “Clearly it’s an absurd judgment. They have a right to protest but they don’t have a right to cause such chaos that people are hurt and can’t get to hospitals. Whose rights are more important? The right of a protester or the right of somebody to go about their business? It’s time that this was resolved and resolved damn quickly by the courts. The Supreme Court now has got to start behaving in a way that represents the balance of rights.”
Surely the Government just needs to pass a law that states, for the avoidance of doubt, that protests may never be a lawful excuse to obstruct a highway. Since Parliament is sovereign, such a law would have to take precedence over any prior legal rulings interpreting general principles in a statement of human rights. It’s no good the Government blaming the courts when it has the power to pass laws that bind the courts.
Instead of such a simple remedial measure we have the new Public Order Bill, which, as Claire Fox explains in the Spectator, is introducing Serious Disruption Protection Orders (i.e., ‘protest-banning orders’) that cover an extraordinary range of offences.
These can be doled out to anyone who has been on more than one protest over the last five years. This includes any type of protest, not just XR-related activities. If issued with an SDPO, you can be banned from going to a particular place, associating with particular people, encouraging someone else to go on a demo or using the internet in a particular way. You can be punished by the state for retweeting an advert for a protest. You can also be issued with an electronic tag for up to 12 months, using GPS data technology that allows the police to monitor your whereabouts 24 hours a day. This extreme level of surveillance risks being used against innocent individuals who have not committed a crime.
All completely over the top, and made all the worse for coming from a Government and legislature that has spent the last three years imposing extreme restrictions on the population and responding so aggressively to protests against them.
Fox adds that the new Bill also, in Clause 9, criminalises “seeking to influence, advising or persuading, attempting to advise or persuade, or otherwise expressing an opinion” in the vicinity of medical facilities. The initial target is anti-abortion protestors, who for some reason are deemed to have fewer protest rights than others. But clearly it could be applied to any medical matter, such as gender reassignment treatment and vaccines. Yet more clamping down on peaceful protest, more constricting of the freedoms we once took for granted.
It’s not complicated. We want normal protests to be allowed, and violence, criminal damage and road-blocking to be banned. How do the politicians and courts manage to make something so simple appear so complicated?
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All part of The Great Reset roadmap.
You beat me to it. That is all that needs to be said. Oh, and the judges have been bought.
And yet – if you dare protest about the biggest ever bonfire of our inalienable rights during peacetime (and, in many respects, even bigger than during wartime), you may well find yourself being attacked by the police and then landing in a cell for daring to defend yourself.
Yes, I know it’s been worse in other countries, and that is not the point – USE IT OR LOSE IT!
Most European countries have been subject to extreme or totalitarian government within living memory. Britain is supposed to be a bastion of freedom, and I suggest that it is because we are losing touch with our culture that this shambles has been possible, and that this is one good reason why we should defend British culture against the relentless onslaught.
Football fans go full blooded Braveheart when their team loses.
But being imprisoned, diapered, threatened, bullied, slapped around, stabbinated with poisoned juice – nothing.
Eco Fascists to ‘save the world’ (from what?) are yet another pet and separate class from the rest of us.
The UK ‘legal’ system is a joke and has no relation to legality, justice or equal treatment. It is a Brahmin-hierarchical construct with an arbitrary set of rules. We all know the judges or most of them are libtards.
One set for some. The rest, and the crushing mass of the rest, for me.
Thanks Will, a lot of that was new to me. It’s all very disturbing.
Somebody sitting in a gantry above a motorway is not stopping anyone using the road. It’s the reaction of the police that causes the problem. Just leave them there.
Stating the obvious but perfectly reasonable. A highly commendable suggestion.
Without food, water and warm clothing.
Technically, no but if they fall they will cause a massive pile-up.
The best solution is to divert the traffic off the motorway at the previous junction (both directions) and then make them stay up there for 7 days with no food or water. But because our roads are so congested it isn’t possible. It would gridlock outer London.
True, but what is the probability they will fall? The probability is low (can’t see many of them wanting to be a martyr), therefore the risk is low.
At least in certain sections of the motorway (if you’re talking M25) the overflow traffic going through the leafy suburbs 24/7 might persuade some supporters of the protests to maybe change their minds, or at least lessen their support.
Especially if heavy lorries going past their homes at 2 in the morning was happening frequently.
I was musing last night as to what would happen to a protestor if a police officer could be induced in some way to fire his taser at the gantry. Would the protestor get any sort of shock? Or is the presumed distance from the officer to the protestor going to be too large to have any effect?
Oh, and I bet if one of the protestors were to get injured (baseball bat to the face say) the ambulance would be allowed through without delay.
Anyone would think that every institution and large business and government globally has been captured by the enemies of freedom.
“U.K. Supreme Court”.
Thank you very much, Mr. Blair…
IDS may be wrong
Absurd means “wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate.” Given the laws Blair and Co intoduced with siupport from the Conservatives, why is the Supreme Court Absurd.
‘Serious Disruption Protection Orders’.
George Orwell looks down from the spiritual ether and says, ‘Come on guys, now you’re just trolling me!’
Q: “How do the politicians and courts manage to make something so simple appear so complicated?”
A: Simple. The Law is an Ass – an Idiot.
Next question.
A Conservative government with an 70-odd seat majority really should have found the time to abolish the Supreme Court.
But in reality we have a continuity new Labour government with a seventy odd seat majority.!
The Public Order Bill is intended to ensure that the Government CAN prevent demonstrations it doesn’t want to encourage ….. like the anti-lockdown protests, but can ignore those which suit its agenda, like the Eco Nutters.
The way they get Joe Public to support restrictions on their civil liberties is to rile them up first. Hence the mass criminal invasions …. and now the push to introduce digital ID, supposedly to stop people who won’t use it anyway! but really to control the population.