Public Order Laws

And “a conspiracy to create a public nuisance”

Every demo is, to some degree, a conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. The whole point of a pre approved demo in central London is to create an event that draws the maximum attention to a given cause which has always meant irreverent chanting - music loud enough to be heard by everyone as the procession passes by and traffic forced to find other routes. Of course it’s a public nuisance … that’s at least half the point.

Thanks to increasingly repressive legislation from Government, we’ve seen a big uplift in the deploying of conspiracy law to arrest demonstrators of which “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance,” which can carry a 12 month custodial sentence, is the most commonly controversially deployed by the Metropolitan Police.

The perversely logical inference some demonstrators will take from this is that if you are planning to cause a public nuisance of any kind - like lying down on roads, or other tactics deployed for centuries in successive fights for civil rights, do not, under any circumstances, discuss it with anyone else before you do it. If you haven’t strategised then plainly you can’t have conspired.

I would argue that if you really cared about public order you’d want your demonstrators to have planned well with stewards and a pre announced route etc. Wildcat individuals who have said nothing to no one will give the security services a far far bigger headache to deal with than well organised protest groups which they can infiltrate and monitor at will. In other words, this law, like so many increasingly repressive laws that with some justification, are referred to as little more than “thought crime” laws, is not fit for purpose. I trust the judiciary will do their best within the law to treat it with the lack of respect it deserves until such time as a government with a spine repeals it.