London’s criminal courts have been weighed down in recent years with a deluge of cases involving protesters – slow marching, sitting in the road, glueing hands to the tarmac, being generally obstructive to the police.
It’s a form of protest that certain groups have boiled down to an art form – performing an act of disobedience which provokes an arrest and then grinding their way through the criminal justice system over the course of months, if not years.
The court process itself has become part of the protest, using every opportunity to promote your particular cause, complaining loudly if there is a perceived unfairness, and taking the penalty, if there is one, at the end.
For those involved, it’s a noble cause and the justice system is part of the state apparatus to be battled against. Westminster Magistrates Court is not wearily accustomed to dozens of protesters slotting in among the burglars, shoplifters, and mobile phone snatchers for their moment in the dock.
Activists shouldn’t be criticised for exercising their legal rights to the full
There are many reasons why the criminal courts in this country are broken, and we should not heap blame on protest groups for a mess which comes mainly from decades of political mismanagement. Activists shouldn’t be criticised for exercising their legal rights to the full. But it’s inescapable that using the courts as a battleground for environmental causes has taken its toll.
Now, we must brace ourselves for a seismic wave of prosecutions of people who have held up placards, worn t-shirts, and adorned badges in support of Palestine Action.
The first criminal charges were announced last week, for protests which took place in early July. More than 500 people were arrested by the Met Police in Parliament Square on Saturday, and there’s no reason to suppose that most, if not all of them, will similarly be charged with supporting a proscribed organisation.
Once the government decided to ban Palestine Action as a terror group, the Met’s hand was forced. Officers could not turn a blind eye to hundreds of people openly supporting a group now designated as terrorist. This morning, Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones went on breakfast TV to back the police, and say protesters will now face the “full force of the law”.
But that of course is the point of the demonstrations, to provoke mass arrests with the knowledge that a protracted court process would follow.
Over the course of a few years, groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion racked up a few thousand arrests, and some of those cases are still plodding through the courts.
In November 2023, an 18-year-old was arrested for blocking the road in Earl’s Court at a Just Stop Oil demo. Last month, his case was sent to the Crown Court for a trial in front of judge and jury. There’s every chance he’ll be in his mid-20s before his case ends, and his case is by no means an isolated incident.
The numbers in the Palestine Action battle could be even bigger, if supporters continue to be willing to be arrested on a regular basis. The High Court isn’t sitting until November to determine if proscription of the group as a terrorist organisation was lawful, and all the while the capital’s magistrates’ courts will use up valuable resources processing these criminal cases.
Awkwardly for the government, those getting arrests will surely realise that they won’t see the inside of a prison cell any time soon, if at all.
Supporting a terror group can lead to 14 years in prison, in the most serious cases. But the reality is that sitting quietly on the lawn holding a placard amounts to a lesser charge, with a six-month maximum prison term. Factor in that the prisons are all full and judges are being dissuaded from passing short jail sentences, and there is very little left to fear for the dedicated protester.
There is very little left to fear for the dedicated protester
Some in Scotland Yard must despair at the position they are in: under attack from certain politicians on tackling crimes like shoplifting and phone theft, yet forced to devote serious amounts of resources to policing weekly protests.
It has been the hallmark of recent governments to make decisions on law and order with no real thought about the knock-on consequences for the courts, hence why we currently have a system on its knees. Such is the desperate state of the court backlog, ministers are now considering making the historic mistake of cutting back the right to trial by jury.
So this government now has a choice to make.
It appears to be standing firmly behind the decision to proscribe Palestine Action. Does it invest heavily to protect the fragile justice system, to ensure it can withstand the deluge of new criminal cases coming its way? Does it draw up plans for extra sitting days so that the courts are not weighed down even further?
Or does it do as its predecessors have done: talk tough on crime while ignoring the consequences, leaving the justice system to pick up the pieces?
If it’s the latter, you wonder – with jury trial already on the chopping block – what other parts of the justice system would have to be hacked away at in order to fix our country’s courts crisis.
Tristan Kirk is The Standard’s Courts Correspondent
