Ambiguous law makes for subjective policing

Coronation Day and the Met Police protester arrests

This piece was written in my capacity as the Free Speech Union’s Communications Officer, and first appeared in the organisation’s Weekly News Round-up. The Free Speech Union exists to protect those who’ve been cancelled, harassed, sacked or penalised for exercising their legal right to free speech whether in the workplace or the public square. Please take a look at the great work the organisation does - our Twitter account is here.

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The Met Police has expressed “regret” that six anti-monarchy protesters from the Republic campaign group were arrested ahead of the Coronation of King Charles III and decided that no charges will be brought against them (Express, FT, Mail, Sky News, Telegraph, Times).

The Free Speech Union’s General Secretary Toby Young joined Emily Carver on GB News earlier this week to discuss the arrest of the CEO of Republic, Graham Smith, and five other activists from the campaign group, as they were about to go on an anti-monarchy demo during the King’s Coronation. Members of the group were planning to stand in view of the royal procession wearing yellow t-shirts, waving ‘#NotMyKing’ placards and chanting slogans – and the protest still went ahead, but without the key organisers.

Of particular concern about this incident, Toby said, is the fact that the protesters were handcuffed and had their ‘#NotMyKing’ placards confiscated. It seemed over the top for the Met Police to pre-emptively arrest the organisers of a protest, he pointed out, particularly when the protesters in question are members of a moderate campaign group like Republic: “The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to the British way of life, and should have been celebrated on Coronation Day, along with everything else we value about our society.”

Police have since confirmed that new powers under the Public Order Act 2023 were used to detain the protesters.

In a lengthy statement, the Met Police said it initially believed items found alongside a large number of ‘#NotMyKing’ placards could have been used as so-called “lock on devices”, which have been criminalised by this new legislation, chiefly because members of groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion have developed a narcissistic fascination with chaining themselves to things in the hope of causing mass disruption.

Republic vigorously disputed the police’s allegations, with one organiser telling BBC News that these alleged “devices” were just the straps used to package up the placards.

The Met Police now appear to have reached the same conclusion, having, as they put it, “fully examined the items seized and reviewed the full circumstances of the arrest”.

“Those arrested stated the items would be used to secure their placards, and the investigation has been unable to prove intent to use them to lock on and disrupt the event,” the Met’s statement continued, before adding: “This evening all six have had their bail cancelled and no further action will be taken. We regret that those six people arrested were unable to join the wider group of protesters in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere on the procession route.”

Was part of the problem here the Public Order Act? Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in the wake of the Met’s statement, Conservative MP David Davis certainly seemed to think so. There are “too many elements” of this recently passed law “that are too crude and too broadly defined,” he said. The former minister later told the Commons that the Home Affairs Select Committee should now be invited to scrutinise the legislation “and come back with recommendations on how to change guidelines and perhaps laws”.

Former Greater Manchester police chief Sir Peter Fahy concurred. Speaking to the BBC, he suggested that “we s[aw] the consequences” of this lack of clarity during the Coronation, “particularly for the poor police officers who have to make sense of legislation that was only passed a few days ago”.

Whatever one’s view of the protesters, the timing of their protest, or even republicanism per se, it’s difficult to disagree with this wider point about the difficulties of operationalising law in general, and this legislation in particular. According to Part 1 of the Public Order Act, for instance, “a person commits an offence [of being equipped for locking on] if they have an object with them in a place other than a dwelling with the intention that it may be used in the course of or in connection with the commission by any person” of the offence of attaching themselves to another person, object or to land.

All of which does rather beg the question of when a lock-on device – as an “object” – is in fact a ‘lock-on device’ and not, say, a cable-tie for use with placards. The danger is that in a fast-paced, risk-laden operational context, hard-pressed officers won’t have time to play these Wittgensteinian language-games and will instead err on the side of caution, eschew nuanced definitional work, and simply arrest peaceful protesters along with those intent on causing disruption.

So the issue here goes beyond the politics of monarchy and republicanism. No one doubts the difficulty and expense of controlling large crowds, but ambiguous law makes for subjective policing. As the author Laura Dodsworth puts it, “a decent democratic country does not arrest people for unloading placards from a van”.

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