Peaceful protest has to be peaceful

Congratulations to civil liberties stalwart Bindmans for its efforts on behalf of people arrested this year in connection with protests at UAV Engines Ltd. A press statement from the law firm says the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped criminal proceedings against 19 protesters for breaching an injunction that it has successfully challenged.

'The court's decision was a victory for freedom of expression,' the release quotes associate Anna Thwaites as saying.

The next time I'm banged up for asserting my right to freedom of expression I shall know where to turn. 

However, one phrase in Bindmans' statement troubles me. It says that nine protesters 'had occupied the roof of the factory'. This does not sound like people exercising freedom of expression so much as attempting to disrupt the work of a world-class British maker of engines for military drones. Indeed the name of the protest campaign's website, www.blockthefactory.org, rather gives the game away. 

The liberal establishment's tendency to interpret direct physical action as 'peaceful protest' so long as it is in a fashionably 'progressive' cause has bothered me for some time. A particularly appalling example was last summer's antics by a group protesting against airport expansion – barricading a road tunnel and, almost unbelievably, an active runway. Although the Aviation Security Act 1982 seems to provide a life sentence for endangering an aircraft, the alleged participants have been charged with lesser offences. And, while the case is still sub judice, I hope that, if convicted, they have the book thrown at them. 

On this, however, I am at odds with such figures as Michael Mansfield QC, who in an open letter to the CPS has described the actions of the protesters as 'reasonable, justifiable and honorable'.

I am fully aware of the honourable history of non-violent direct action, from the suffragists in the UK to Gandhi's satyagraha in the 1930s. In a slightly less historic cause, I have taken part in direct actions myself on the high seas as a reporter embedded with an environmental protest group. We can all imagine situations where we hope we would have the courage to stand up against unjust laws and, all other possibilities being exhausted, to break them.

The key phrase is 'all other possibilities being exhausted'.

I am open to correction, but in both the UAV Engines and the Heathrow cases it seems to me that protesters had plenty of possibilities for presenting their argument short of direct physical action. Indeed in the current pathetic political climate, it's the supporters of airport expansion who might justify taking extreme steps to get their argument across. 

The distinction between freedom of expression and freedom to sabotage has been familiar at least since J S Mill set out his famous corn-chandler example in 1859. If current public order laws do not recognise it, they need to be reformed. More probably, the laws are available but need to be enforced. And if campaigners believe such laws are unjust, they could emulate Gandhi's example and shame the enforcers by pleading guilty.

That would at least lighten Bindmans' case load a little. 

Michael Cross is Gazette news editor