You will be arrested for hurling obscenities at mourners regardless of who the dead person is.
People were arrested at Margaret Thatchers funeral for the same thing.
It’s not rocket science. You’re not allowed to do that.
People were arrested at Margaret Thatchers funeral for the same thing.
It’s not rocket science. You’re not allowed to do that.
The word hurling in the context of insults or obscenities means vocalizing them in a very audible fashion. The article states that the woman at St Giles was not audibly protesting but rather holding a sign. Given that she was quietly expressing her opinion, tasteful or not, it seems she could have been quietly removed without being arrested.
>"In widely seen photos, a woman holding a sign reading "Abolish monarchy" and "F*** imperialism" was arrested on Sunday at St. Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the queen's body is to lie at rest until Tuesday.
Further the object of their protest was the institution and neither the mourners or the deceased.
The other two people mentioned in the article who were vocal, were outside on public streets and not in a Church. The article states they were near parade barricades. Again the object of their protest was the institution and it was being done on public streets. Surely you are allowed to express your discontent about an institution on a public street. That's not rocket science.
>"And in London, a woman was led away by four uniformed officers on Monday after holding up a sign reading "Not my king" — which has become a trending hashtag — near Westminster Hall."
Again we have a woman who was holding up a sign on a public street "near Westminster Hall."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church#Laws_l...
Because that case doesn't strike down the state laws preventing protests in close proximity. It just ruled that the private citizen can't get lots of money for emotional distress caused by a protest.
Even in the US I would think protesting a funeral to be in extremely poor taste, no matter the target. What’s that Latin phrase about the recently dead?
Wait, what? Pretty sure dogs don't have the anatomical capability to do a nazi salute. At best they can just lift a leg up, but is that really a nazi salute?
Father Ted is Irish as in Republic of Ireland as in not UKoGB - we share a very, very strange border. Having said that, Father Ted was turned down by RTE for being too Irish and was eventually financed by the BBC! Thankfully it eventually aired because it is absolutely belting.
The cast and creators were Irish though.
If that falls under the rule you're describing, doesn't that render it impossible to protest a ceremony, as long as it happens after a funeral? It seems you're defining away the protest of hereditary succession as unacceptably rude?
The coronation is months away, he was protesting the ascension at the Queen's funeral procession. That does not avoid disparagement of the Queen.
I certainly don't think he should be arrested but he's clearly boneheaded. He'll have plenty of time to protest both the ascension and the coronation, of someone who is a much softer target that the Queen, especially considering she's just died.
PR own goal if ever there was one. Even Extinction Rebellion have had the good sense to postpone their demos. Is there anyone but the Western Baptist Church who thinks it's a good idea to protest at funerals?
They say if you support free speech you'll end up defending vile people, and it's true, he shouldn't be arrested, he should be allowed to say what he said, but he is vile and it was stupid.
Symon Hill was arrested for protesting at the regional proclamation in Oxford: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/21275817.photo-gallery-pro...
Where did you get the impression that this was a funeral procession?
Which means it was still not a coronation, it also wasn't a funeral procession, I still think he's boneheaded but not as much as before or nearly as much as the ones in Edinburgh, and none of them should've been arrested (maybe perhaps the one that shouted at Prince Andrew, but definitely not the others).
"(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he/she:
(a) uses threatening (or abusive) words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening (or abusive)"
It is worth noting that a long-running tradition in the UK is that if a policeman disagrees with a piece of legislation and the opportunity arises to challenge it favourably in court, he arrests somebody under the legislation in question in what may be favourable but reasonable circumstances (favourable to the defendant) in order to circumscribe the limitations of the act in question. As a consequence, in many ways, I therefore think that this may also be a challenge by police officers to the validity of the conservative government's latest legislation that aims to ban "disruptive" protests, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which was largely modified to deal with the (IMO effective) protests of the Insulate Britain campaign who recently brought major motorways to a crawl. It is a deeply divisive and very authoritarian bill, and would cover this situation. Specifically, it provides that:
"[...] police forces are allowed to place restrictions on protests they believe would otherwise constitute an existing offence of public nuisance, including imposing starting and finishing times and noise limits, and be able to consider actions by one individual as protests under provisions of the Act. Protestors disobeying such instructions from the police may be committing a criminal offence."
As recognised by the police, positing the possibility of transitioning to a republic (from a constitutional monarchy) is almost certainly a clear-cut case of a legitimate piece of protest, and so if someone _did_ protest accordingly _without_ being rude and disruptive I think this would be a perfect opportunity for the courts to throw out the charge.
Edit: Further bits of fun law – "public nuisance" is both a tort and a very old legal concept, recommended effectively for removal and updating from the criminal statutes by the Law Commission in 2015 [2]. It is described quite formally in many words (c.f. [2]) but more usefully defined by the fact that it
typically consists either of an environmental nuisance, such as carrying on
works producing excessive noise or smells, or of offensive or dangerous behaviour
in public, such as noisy parties and hanging from bridges.
It also includes obstructing the public highway, though now this is also a statutory offence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police,_Crime,_Sentencing_and_...
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Protests should be allowed, but it's not an absolute god given right - if you're being a dick, destroying public property, advocating violence or hate - then no, you shouldn't be allowed to protest. I know in America you let even neo nazis march your streets and boast how that's "freedom" but that's not freedom - that's blindly following certain ideology(freedom to do anything AT ALL costs) without any consideration as to what that does to your society.
> Protests should be allowed
They are.
> destroying public property
Is illegal and you can be arrested for it.
> advocating violence or hate
Is illegal and you can be arrested for it.
You just can’t be arrested for “being rude”. You have to commit a crime.
Protesting does not mean you’re immune to prosecution for non-free-speech crimes. What happened with the BLM riots was simply governments deciding, for one reason or another, not to stop the crimes being committed.
> Is illegal and you can be arrested for it.
This is untrue. Immediate, direct, actionable threats are illegal, saying "I/we/you need to go hunt down and murder X now" can be construed as an actionable threat.
Extolling the virtues of murder and opining about how nice it would be if someone finally hunted down and killed X is legal free speech.
You can talk about how X needs to die all you want, but if you start making immediate, direct, actionable threats towards X, that crosses territory from free speech to illegal threats.
Various circuit courts have different tests for what constitutes a true threat versus legal free speech, some of which can be found here[1].
For example, here's the 2nd Circuit's opinion:
> a true threat is “on its face and in the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to the person threatened, as to convey a gravity of purpose and imminent prospect of execution.”
[1] https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1025/true-threats
I generally like the right to protest, but i dont want 100% free for all.
What happens when the other side starts shooting at you? Do you think the guns still help you safely protest. For that matter, what use is a gun if someone from behind cover throws a molotov at your face?
The fact that all state power eventually comes down to men with guns.
>What happens when the other side starts shooting at you? Do you think the guns still help you safely protest.
You either get out of there or you shoot back, that's really not a hard question. And to your second question yes, especially if the other side is shooting or threatening to shoot. Safer if you have guns as well than only they have guns. And just look at Kyle Rittenhouse, he would have been dead if he hadn't been armed. The third person he shot straight up said that he would have shot Kyle if Kyle hadn't vaporized his bicep first.
>For that matter, what use is a gun if someone from behind cover throws a molotov at your face?
Once again it makes you safer, because they can't risk throwing molotovs at you from out in the open. Your being armed helps you control when and from where they could possibly attack you with molotovs or whatever.
My personal experience of backpacking around the world was replete with lectures from 25-year-old European women about the US's issues. They were of such poor quality that I mostly just smiled and shrugged it off, knowing that it'd be a waste of my vacation to try and explain to them the nuances of cultural difference. But I had the delightful catharsis of schooling a particularly-obnoxious British girl on her country's role as the primary contender for history's greatest supervillain (unsurprisingly, her grasp of history and politics was.... poor).
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voti...
Or how about how everyone knows the political affiliations of supreme court judges? In a normal country judges are apolitical.
There's a bunch of reasons why the US is considered a flawed democracy, with the score going down every year, in the Democracy Index.
If shitting in the street were legal would you complain when people passed a law to stop your bad behaviour?
These tired strawmen need to stop. Anti-royalists are being arrested for expressing anti-royal views in inconvenient places, not "hurling obscenities at a funeral".
But in fairness to the police there seems to be a mass fervour at the moment and they may actually be doing the hecklers a service by taking them away for their own safety...
This isn't a case of protestors being repeatedly ignored - the public discussion about the monarchy is unfolding in most media outlets right now and other forms of protest are still quite available.
Additionally, while I think this is extremely unhealthy mentally, there was a not insignificant proportion of Britain that felt they had a personal relationship with the queen even if they never met her for tea.