Conspiracy to cause a public nuisance
How this and other tricks are being used to suppress our protest rights
I hadn’t intended to write a Substack so soon after my previous one but two things have happened in the last 24 hours that I felt compelled to write again today.
Greenpeace have published their findings from a Freedom Of Information request they made to The Met Police about their use of “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” to arrest protesters. The research found that less than 3% of arrests for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in the past five years resulted in a prosecution. The data adds weight to the accusation that The Met’s use of this to arrest nonviolent protesters is an abuse of police powers. The Met’s response to this accusation, and their justification for the low number of prosecutions, is that the threshold for arrest is much lower than the threshold to charge someone.
“The threshold for arrest is reasonable suspicion that an offence has occurred. The threshold to charge someone is significantly higher, with officers needing to show that there is enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction at court. Proving that an individual has conspired with others to cause a public nuisance, to that standard, is particularly challenging. This is reflected in the limited number of charges for that offence.” The Met Police.
I saw first hand how this is being used to stop protest, how protesters are being placed in police custody to get them off the streets and then given bail conditions that can last for long periods to stop them from protesting, only to later have those charges dropped. You can see it clearly in my film The Line We Crossed which was released in cinemas and community centres across the UK just last week. I’ve pulled out a clip from the film here that talks to this very point.
Six months later all the Just Stop Oil protesters arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance at The Coronation received a letter that they were no longer under investigation because of “insufficient evidence”. Meanwhile they were forced to spend six months of their life with the uncertainty of this hanging over their heads.
If you want to see the way protest is currently being policed in the UK, through the experiences of people on the frontline, I urge you to come to one of the screenings of The Line We Crossed. It adds the human element to what it means when our democratic right to protest is taken away from us.
The other event that happened yesterday was 385 UK MPs voted to proscribe Palestine Action as terrorist group. Only 26 voted against the order. There are already laws in place to charge protesters for criminal damage and aggravated trespass. Elevating this direct action protest group to terrorists puts them alongside organisations whose actions intend to kill. The UN have themselves put out a statement saying “According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism.”
The same order also bans two neo-Nazi groups, the Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and the Russia Imperial Movement (RIM). Maniacs Murder Cult is a violent and extreme neo-Nazi group. The Russia Imperial Movement is a violent white supremacist militant group. If Palestine Action had not been tied together with these other two violent organisations would 385 MPs have voted to proscribe them? Is this more dirty tricks to get an organisation that is the thorn in the side of the government out of the way? An organisation that will have deeply embarrassed the government by breaking into a secure military area. An organisation that is a threat to vested corporate interests.
If this order is not thrown out by The House of Lords today then, in just a few days time, it will be illegal to be a member of Palestine Action or show any moral support for them.