Where peaceful protest is a crime.

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

George Monbiot

Being an offensive bigot shouldn’t be a crime, said George Monbiot in the London Guardian. Yet last week in Britain, a Christian activist faced charges for handing out leaflets denouncing homosexuality at a gay and lesbian festival. The charges of “abusive or threatening behavior” against Christian Voice leader Stephen Green were finally dropped, after it was determined that public order was not actually breached. But free speech may not fare so well next time, thanks to the “draconian laws propelled through a dozy Parliament by Tony Blair.” The Protection from Harassment Act of 1997, for example, allows the Crown to prosecute anyone causing a person “alarm or distress” on “at least two occasions.” The law was designed to protect people from stalkers, but it is “now used routinely against nonviolent protestors.” The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act of 2005 would be an “even more useful” law to invoke against Green, since its definition of harassment includes seeking “to persuade any person not to do something that he is entitled to do.” Our only solace is that the police, “fuddled like everyone else by the size and complexity of the act, have not yet grasped its full implications.”