End the Criminalisation of Protest: The Case of Trenton Oldfield

This morn­ing (19 Octo­ber 2012) Trenton Old­field will be sen­tenced at Isle­worth Crown Court for his protest at the Oxford and Cam­bridge Boat Race. He faces a poten­tial cus­todial sen­tence for his dir­ect action against gov­ern­ment cuts and a cul­ture of elit­ism in the UK. This state­ment was writ­ten, together with Defend The Right To Protest calls for an end to the crim­in­al­isa­tion of protest. Select list of sig­nat­or­ies below. Full list here.

***

On the 7^th of April 2012, Trenton Old­field under­took a direct-​action protest at the Oxford and Cam­bridge Boat Race. The aim of his protest was to focus atten­tion on the long-​standing and entirely unjust inequal­it­ies in Brit­ish soci­ety that are being severely exacer­bated by gov­ern­ment cuts and reduc­tions in civil liber­ties. Trenton chose the Oxford and Cam­bridge Boat Race because it is a sym­bol of class, priv­ilege and elit­ism in Britain.

An aston­ish­ing 70% of the cab­inet in the cur­rent gov­ern­ment are Oxford or Cam­bridge gradu­ates. This gov­ern­ment is pro­tect­ing the priv­ileges of the wealthy while cut­ting the essen­tial neces­sit­ies of the major­ity and the poor and redu­cing people’s rights and freedoms. In the three days before Trenton’s protest, the coali­tion gov­ern­ment (1) received royal assent for its bill to privat­ise the NHS, (2) intro­duced the Com­mu­nic­a­tions Data Bill to leg­al­ise sur­veil­lance of all digital com­mu­nic­a­tions of UK sub­jects, and (3) called on people to ‘shop their neigh­bours’ if they sus­pec­ted they might protest at the 2012 Olympic Games. Trenton’s protest aimed at draw­ing atten­tion to these injustices. He swam into the course of the boat race. The race was hal­ted and restar­ted 25 minutes later. The action was seen by an inter­na­tional audi­ence but it affected just 18 row­ers and a hand­ful of event organ­isers on a closed river, on a long week­end. The direct-​action protest was wholly con­sist­ent with Trenton’s dec­ade+ work in Lon­don on address­ing this city’s unne­ces­sary poverty and inequal­it­ies. The audi­ence for the free event exper­i­enced a minor delay of 25 minutes. The BBC cov­er­age ended at its pre-​scheduled time-​slot. Not a single com­plaint was received from the pub­lic by either the Met­ro­pol­itan police or the BBC.

Trenton was ini­tially charged with Sec­tion 5 of the ‘pub­lic order act’. Hansard reports reveal that gov­ern­ment min­is­ters asked the police com­mis­sioner to increase the charge so that a cus­todial sen­tence could be achieved. On the morn­ing of his first court appear­ance (23 April 2012) Trenton’s charge was sig­ni­fic­antly increased via the ancient com­mon law charge of ‘pub­lic nuis­ance’ under which con­vic­tion can res­ult in life in prison. On the 26 Septem­ber 2012 Trenton was found guilty of caus­ing ‘pub­lic nuis­ance’ for under­tak­ing his protest.

The recent con­vic­tion and sen­ten­cing of Rus­sian fem­in­ist rock col­lect­ive Pussy Riot to two years in prison for their protest was rightly met with shock and anger for the lack of tol­er­ance towards dis­sent under Putin. The very same lack of tol­er­ance towards dis­sent seems to be hap­pen­ing in Bri­tain as Trenton waits for sen­ten­cing on the 19^th Octo­ber 2012.

Defend the Right to Protest (http://​www​.defendtheright​to​protest​.org/) extend our solid­ar­ity to Trenton and whole­heartedly believe that he should not have faced crim­inal charges for exer­cising his right to protest. We are con­cerned about the change in the ori­ginal charge seem­ingly due to polit­ical and media pres­sure. To us it is clear that this protest against inequal­ity and elit­ism does not war­rant a cus­todial sen­tence, least of all pos­sibly years in prison. Defend the Right to Protest (http://​www​.defendtheright​to​protest​.org/) are also alarmed that this charge might be levied against pro­test­ers in the future. The only motive we can see for the CPS select­ing this out­dated legis­la­tion is that it offers courts the chance to hand down sen­tences up to life in prison.

After his ori­ginal ver­dict Trenton made the fol­low­ing statement:

“As inequal­it­ies increase in Bri­tain and across much of the world, so does the crim­in­al­isa­tion of protest; my solid­ar­ity is with every­one every­where work­ing towards more equit­able societies.”

We urge an end to this wholly inap­pro­pri­ate over-​punishment of Trenton and the crim­in­al­isa­tion of protest.

Han­nah Dee, Chair, Defend the Right to Protest

John Car­los, 1968 Olympics Black Power salute

Adbusters, Cul­ture­Jam­mers

Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters

David Bur­gess, 2003 ‘No War’ Sydney Opera House

Danny Dorling, author Inequal­it­ies: Why Social Inequal­it­ies Persist

Gloria Mor­rison, Joint Enter­prise Not Guilty By Association

John Pil­ger, journ­al­ist and author The Rulers of the World

Mai Pal, Anti-​capitalist Initiative

Marc McGowan, Artist Taxi Driver

Fanny Malinen and Steve Rushton, Bread and Circuses

David Wear­ing, Depart­ment of Devel­op­ment Stud­ies, SOAS

Car­oline Day, Save Leyton Marshes

Dan Hind, author The Return of the Public

Dave Zirin, sports writer, act­iv­ist, author Bad Sports: A People’s His­tory of Sports

Illan Wall, Crit­ical Legal Thinking

John Pil­ger, journ­al­ist and author The Rulers of the World

Mike Wells, Games Monitor

Kris O’Donnell, Occupy London

Les Levidow, Cam­paign Against Crim­in­al­ising Communities

Marc Perel­man, author Bar­baric Sport: A Global Plague

Mike Davis, author Evil Para­dises: Dream­worlds of Neoliberalism

Nad­ine O’Connor, Cam­paign dir­ector Fath­ers 4 Justice

Pau­line van Mourik Broek­man, Dir­ector Mute Publishing

Simon Hardy, Anti-​capitalist Initiative

Space­hi­jack­ers

Stefan Dick­ers, Bish­opsgate Institute

Simon Wor­thing­ton, Co-​publisher Mute

To add your name to this list, please email naik_​d@​hotmail.​com /​Full list here.

Deepa Naik (This Is Not A Gateway)

& Defend The Right To Protest

_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Deepa Naik

Coordinators@​thisisnotagateway.​net /​naik_​d@​hotmail.​com

www​.this​isnot​ag​ate​way​.net

Defend The Right To Protest

info@​defendtherighttoprotest.​org

www​.defendtheright​to​proest​.org

This entry was posted on 19 October 2012 at 6:15 am and is filed under 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.