The Need for Public Protest

We are delighted to repub­lish this brief piece from Shadow of the Noose, the increas­ing crim­in­al­isa­tion of protest in UK is troub­ling. This piece con­cerns the trial and sen­ten­cing of Trenton Old­field, who dis­rup­ted the Oxford/​Cambridge Boat Race — it is dif­fi­cult to find a clearer image of priv­ilege in sport in Great Bri­tain today.

Earlier last week, Trenton Old­field was con­victed of ‘Caus­ing a Pub­lic Nuis­ance’ by a jury at the Isle­worth Crown Court. Pre­vi­ous instances of this rarely pro­sec­uted offence include impreg­nat­ing the air with “noi­some and offens­ive stinks and smells” caus­ing “a nuis­ance to all the King’s liege sub­jects liv­ing in Twick­en­ham” But Old­field was the man who had the temer­ity to dis­rupt the Oxford and Cam­bridge Boat Race last April, by choos­ing to take a swim, just as both boats were get­ting into their stride.

The pro­sec­utor explained to the court that his actions had “spoiled the race for hun­dreds of thou­sands of spec­tat­ors” and for this, the judge has adjourned sen­tence, com­ment­ing that she is not rul­ing out a prison sentence.

Of course, Mr Old­field is not the first per­son to attempt to make a point by spoil­ing the fun of sports enthu­si­asts. Fam­ously protest­ors dug up the crease at the 1975 Third Test between Eng­land and Aus­tralia in an attempt to bring to the pub­lics atten­tion that an inno­cent man had been sent to prison for rob­bery the year before. Only last year, that man, George Davis was exon­er­ated by the Court of Appeal and his con­vic­tion held to be unsafe. One of the men who van­dal­ised the cricket field, Peter Chap­pell, was sent to gaol for his part in try­ing to raise pub­lic aware­ness in what has since been recog­nised as a gross mis­car­riage of justice. No doubt the Third Test, back in that rainy Sum­mer of 1975 was “spoiled for hun­dreds of thou­sands of spec­tat­ors”, but, nearly 40 years later, their sport­ing pleas­ure was noth­ing com­pared to the gaol­ing of an inno­cent man.

Sim­il­arly the thrill of horsera­cing was spoiled for many spec­tat­ors when a suf­fra­gette threw her­self under the King’s Horse and was trampled to death, but surely the spoil­ing of their fun was noth­ing com­pared to the denegra­tion of women in that pre-​vote era. Her tra­gic death, as she ran into the path of the gal­lop­ing horse was borne of anger and frus­tra­tion in an age since recog­nised as dis­crim­in­at­ory and unfair.

Inter­est­ingly, one of the reas­ons why Old­field swam out amongst the boats was that he objec­ted to the gov­ern­ment and Olympic organ­isers call for us to report any­one we sus­pec­ted of plan­ning a pub­lic protest dur­ing the Olympic period. For this he was charged with ‘Caus­ing a Pub­lic Nuis­ance’. The ingredi­ents of the offence are that he behaved in such a way that an injury was suffered by the pub­lic and poten­tially car­ries a life sen­tence. Of course, Mr Old­field will not get life, but this rarely pro­sec­uted offence may yet see him serving time.

In fact what Trenton Old­field did dur­ing the last Boat Race was in the finest his­toric tra­di­tions of get­ting pub­lic atten­tion at a big sport­ing event, for a cause which struggled to attract National interest, sym­pathy or appre­ci­ation. He has been treated in the same way as oth­ers before him, ridiculed and crim­in­al­ised. The usual sug­ges­tions that a sport­ing venue is, in any event, no place for such beha­viour has also, pre­dict­ably reared its head and, again pre­dict­ably, ven­er­ated sports people have cas­tig­ated the beha­viour of the protestor.

We live in a Soci­ety which only tol­er­ates pub­lic protest so long as it is clean, rel­at­ively quiet and does not incon­veni­ence any­one. The moment it threatens or spoils our fun it becomes a police matter.

Ulti­mately, his­tory treats the protestor far more equit­ably than the present.

Tags: Protest

This entry was posted on 16 October 2012 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Critical Legal Theory, Jurisprudence, Radical Politics, The Political. Published under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License: You are welcome to share and remix this content for non-commercial purposes. Kindly acknowledge and hyperlink the source.