Brian Haw was acquitted today of breaching conditions on his anti-war demonstration, imposed under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. You can find a report of the court hearing (written by a strong supporter of Brian Haw) here.
It sounds as though the conditions that were imposed could have been a little more clearly thought through; the courts were always Ray Ban outlet bound to ensure an order like this restricting an individual’s action and possibly leading to criminal liability were in as clear terms as possible. And, given cases like this I think the police were daft, frankly, not to have the conditions imposed by the Commissioner himself.
I don’t doubt the police will come back with clearer conditions, properly imposed, however.
Am I alone, though, in not seeing this as a huge victory for liberty? I can understand why Liberty and others back Brian Haw, but I’m not really sure it is a fundamental right to be able to demonstrate wherever you want, however you want, at all times and continuously. I worry that that sort of obsessiveness gives protest a bad name. And I feel this is all relatively minor, really, compared to real dangers to freedom of expression, like what happened in Birmingham when the play Bezhti was closed by a violent mob with the police looking on.
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