Oedipus Lex

I have writ­ten many essays and waxed lyr­ical to any­one who I can pin down about how our civil liber­ties have been cas­u­ally eroded over the last 12 years. On the 10^th of Septem­ber I saw, first hand, the state of affairs we are now in.

Not actu­ally the protest I attended.

I had little to do on a Thursday night and hav­ing seen an advert on the Space Hijack­ers web­site I thought I would pop along to watch them demon­strate out­side the annual arms dealer’s din­ner in Park Lane.

By the time I got to the Hilton, Park Lane there were prob­ably about 30 pro­test­ers. Some were milling around car­ry­ing vari­ous plac­ards while some were sit­ting on the floor out­side the front door of the hotel. Also in attend­ance were prob­ably about 100 police officers. Amus­ingly, the Space Hijack­ers were dressed in din­ner jack­ets car­ry­ing signs say­ing: ‘Arms Dealer’ with a large arrow. They then fol­lowed people going into the din­ner point­ing their signs as they went.

The police had obvi­ously had enough of the pro­test­ers out­side the front door and rightly so. They were obstruct­ing entry and exit and get­ting in the way of the taxis. At was at this point that my sym­pathy with the Met ended.

Hav­ing also decided that they did not want pro­test­ers on the street the senior officer decided to invoke Sec­tion 14 of the Pub­lic Order Act 1986. And for those of you who are in any doubt about what this means:

Sec­tion 14 — Impos­ing con­di­tions on pub­lic assem­blies
provides police the power to impose con­di­tions on assem­blies “to pre­vent ser­i­ous pub­lic dis­order, ser­i­ous crim­inal dam­age or ser­i­ous dis­rup­tion to the life of the com­munity”, but the con­di­tions are lim­ited to the spe­cify­ing of:
the num­ber of people who may take part,
the loc­a­tion of the assembly, and
its max­imum duration

An exten­ded line of police­men des­cen­ded on us and informed every­body that Sec­tion 14 had been invoked, as a res­ult if we wanted to protest we would have to make our way to an enclosed pen. The pen happened to be off to one side behind a bush. A few people star­ted telling the 5 – 0 that they didn’t want to be kettled and asked if they would be let out if they wanted to go home. The police­man said that this could not be guar­an­teed. He also told us we would be arres­ted if we didn’t move. When asked what for a wouldn’t tell us. I asked him if he thought this was Kafka-esque and received a blank look in reply.

It seems the police had got a little bored of try­ing to round people up s nobody was keen for a good ket­tling. We milled around for a bit, I say we but I was off to one side twit­ter­ing on my phone. A little later the officer in charge had obvi­ously had enough and the line advance once more. By this point I was rather bored and stand­ing next to the bus stop. The line passed me by but the inspector spot­ted me, poin­ted and shouted ‘watch that one, he’s been here for half an hour.’ I should prob­ably point out that by this then the only time I had been with the pro­test­ers was when I had my short dis­cus­sion with the cop­per about Kafka. I was dressed in a suit and stand­ing on Park Lane.

6 police­men circled me and asked what I was doing. I stated that I was wait­ing for a bus. They asked which bus. I said that bus and poin­ted at the num­ber 74. The bus pulled up and one of them shouted ‘You’d bet­ter get on that bus’ I replied that I would but that the driver hadn’t actu­ally opened the door and this was imped­ing my jour­ney. Ran­domly another man in a suit wait­ing for the bus star­ted yelling ‘You’d bet­ter get on that bloody bus, don’t you real­ise this is east Germany?!’

I was then threatened with arrest. Half of me was inclined to let them arrest me and then have them explain under which piece of legis­la­tion I was being held for loiter­ing. I then remembered that I could be arres­ted for any­thing and got on the bus. We then had the com­edy spec­tacle of a bus stuck in traffic while 6 police­man stood, star­ing at a man on the bus through the window.

My thoughts of the day were thus: While we have the right to protest it is on the terms of the people you are gen­er­ally want­ing to protest against. When they’ve decided you’re get­ting in the way you can be dis­persed or kettled at will. The invoc­a­tion of Sec­tion 14 was and is entirely arbit­rary, were 30 people hold­ing signs about to com­mit: “ser­i­ous pub­lic dis­order, ser­i­ous crim­inal dam­age or ser­i­ous dis­rup­tion to the life of the com­munity” I don’t think so. It seems the Met have 2 gears; soft or hard. At one point I was shoved in the back by a ser­geant, if I’d have thought about it on inclined to trouble I could have pulled off a foot­ball style dive, I could have taken their shoulder num­bers but to what avail?