The Police - keeping us safe

FishofContemplation said:
Under the Section 1 definitions of the Act, terrorism is defined to include “an action or threat of action … for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause … that involves serious damage to property”. You might well think that is a nonsense inclusion. I certainly do. It certainly doesn’t match my view of the normal meaning of terrorism. But it could be argued that the time to protest that it was nonsense was in 2000. It is hard to argue, a quarter of a century on, that their action didn’t involve serious damage to property.
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There is a very prominent AND on section one - which is where I think the ambiguity lies.

Is also question the meaning of "serious damage to property". If they are being charged with Criminal Damage then presumably they haven't met this higher threshold of "serious".

The Act was protested against 25 years ago for the very reasons it's being questioned now. It was always open to abuse.

Angus said:
Anyone charged with wounding and ABH HAS been charged with assault, both offences are covered by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
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They haven't been charged with ABH and the Wounding charge is tempered by the wording used afterwards. It's fairly
clear they didn't violently attack the Police but may have caused them injury whilst the smashing up machinery.

Not excusing the injury to the Police but it paints the situation I a slightly less confrontational picture.

Heam44 said:
Both of those charges are assault charges, more serious than “common assault” to which you likely refer.

“Wounding” is the most serious assault charge. - GBH (Grievous bodily harm).

“Actual bodily harm” - ABH. Again more serious than “common assault” but not as serious as GBH.

So yes, they have been charged with “assaults” - more serious assaults.

It’s crazy, people can go on the internet, pass of their opinion as fact based evidence to prove a point when it’s clear they have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about.
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As above. They haven't been charged with ABH (according to the BBC article quoted).

The wounding charge has a massive caveat. It may still be "Assault" legally (and I stand corrected on that point) but the discussion was about the headlines which implied they had deliberately gone out of their way to target the police.

Nothing I've seen so far suggests this happened. If you have more detail please share.
 
Laughing said:
Wasn't the reason the group were proscribed as terrorist was because they broke into Brize Norton? If that is the case then you can't have protesters breaking into military bases, can you?

Didn't their stupidity lead them here?
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People keep saying they 'broke in'. Did they?
Did they force entry? Or did they just drive in on scooters without challenge because of appalling security, for which nobody seems to have been brought to account?
 
Scrote said:
There is a very prominent AND on section one - which is where I think the ambiguity lies.

Is also question the meaning of "serious damage to property". If they are being charged with Criminal Damage then presumably they haven't met this higher threshold of "serious".

The Act was protested against 25 years ago for the very reasons it's being questioned now. It was always open to abuse.


They haven't been charged with ABH and the Wounding charge is tempered by the wording used afterwards. It's fairly
clear they didn't violently attack the Police but may have caused them injury whilst the smashing up machinery.

Not excusing the injury to the Police but it paints the situation I a slightly less confrontational picture.


As above. They haven't been charged with ABH (according to the BBC article quoted).

The wounding charge has a massive caveat. It may still be "Assault" legally (and I stand corrected on that point) but the discussion was about the headlines which implied they had deliberately gone out of their way to target the police.

Nothing I've seen so far suggests this happened. If you have more detail please share.
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I have just read the reports of the case for the first time. If the BBC article is correct one person has been charged with two offences of ABH as well as much more serious charge of wounding a police officer during the course of her arresting another.

You seem to know more about the case than me so what is the caveat re the wounding charge?
 
1finny said:
Just a guess - You don’t know that tho do you?

If you can provide evidence of the supposed £30m or so damage I would be interested to read it. Serious btw
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Stories from Telegraph and Mail don’t convince me, I’m afraid.
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It's routine practice.

All major airlines have either spare engines or contracts for replacements so I'm sure the RAF do, it would be negligent not to.

Not the same industry but I worked on a vessel where we used two to large gas turbines (power station size) to power some of the equipment, we had a spare turbine so that we could swap them out for maintenance rather than shut the vessel down.

The figure I saw for the damage was £5m which could quite easily be the cost of the strip down & rebuild of two engines.
 
Angus said:
Multi million pound damage is going to be serious damage. Damage reducing the efficiency of the armed services is going to be serious damage.

The Attorney General’s reference no 1 of 2022,( the Colstan four damage to the statue case in Bristol) likely to be applicable to any prosecution here.
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I'm not attempting to challenge the assertion that the damage may well be serious here; I'm emphasising that the law requires that the damage needs to be serious. Gaining entry to an important security facility without causing serious damage would, on its own, not meet this threshold.
 
BoroBosco said:
It's routine practice.

All major airlines have either spare engines or contracts for replacements so I'm sure the RAF do, it would be negligent not to.

Not the same industry but I worked on a vessel where we used two to large gas turbines (power station size) to power some of the equipment, we had a spare turbine so that we could swap them out for maintenance rather than shut the vessel down.

The figure I saw for the damage was £5m which could quite easily be the cost of the strip down & rebuild of two engines.
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£5m against 60,000 lives. Difficult choice.
 
BoroBosco said:
Did it save 60,000 lives?

I'm not arguing against their cause and I don't believe they should have been proscribed but claiming they are peaceful protestors just isn't true.
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How many of them need to be violent for the whole organisation to be deemed not peaceful?
 
NYboro said:
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. They are the terrorists here.
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I agree they are. But in the real world you can't justify an act of sabotage against defence equipment and violence in the UK with the actions of a foreign government. Even if you think our government isnt doing enough.

I think there's a few people on here who actually seem to agree with the action that the organisation have taken and are somewhat sympathetic.

On the other side there's lots of people who support direct action against the governments stance on asylum seekers.

Public order is incredibly important for any semblance of democracy to be sustained.

We can all dislike the legislation, think that is been misused or even call for it to be changed. But the group fit into the description that's outlined.
 
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Emmersons_BrazillianDong said:
I agree they are. But in the real world you can't justify an act of sabotage against defence equipment and violence in the UK with the actions of a foreign government. Even if you think our government isnt doing enough.

I think there's a few people on here who actually seem to agree with the action that the organisation have taken and are somewhat sympathetic.

We can all dislike the legislation, think that is been misused or even call for it to be changed. But the group fit into the description.
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When the government first mentioned proscribing PA, I wrote to my MP telling her that this was what I would expect from a right-wing authoritarian regime, not the Labour party. I haven't had a reply.
 
Secretary General of Amnesty International says

"The UK Government is targeting protestors for speaking out for Palestinian rights."

She also went on to say

"The UK Government seems more bent on abusing terrorism laws to restrict protests rather than addressing the root cause behind these actions - livestreamed genocide in Gaza"

Damning that
 
NYboro said:
When the government first mentioned proscribing PA, I wrote to my MP telling her that this was what I would expect from a right-wing authoritarian regime, not the Labour party. I haven't had a reply.
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I'm certainly surprised that they didn't take such action against any of the right wing groups that have propogated over the past few years.

There's significant organisation that's taken place which has been evidenced for years. The ideology is clear too and I don't even think it's up for discussion who poses the most threat
 
Emmersons_BrazillianDong said:
I agree they are. But in the real world you can't justify an act of sabotage against defence equipment and violence in the UK with the actions of a foreign government. Even if you think our government isnt doing enough.

I think there's a few people on here who actually seem to agree with the action that the organisation have taken and are somewhat sympathetic.

On the other side there's lots of people who support direct action against the governments stance on asylum seekers.

Public order is incredibly important for any semblance of democracy to be sustained.

We can all dislike the legislation, think that is been misused or even call for it to be changed. But the group fit into the description that's outlined.
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I'd hope no one is sympathetic to the alleged attacks on the police with sledgehammers.

Taking a scooter ride around Brize Norton, spray painting some planes in order to raise the profile of kids and families being murdered, at will, by the IDF - I'm ok with that.
 
boroboy6872 said:
Can we justify it if said defence equipment is being sold to a foreign government that is committing genocide?
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Well as you know. The equipment that was damaged was not being sold to Isreal but I'm not here to be pedantic nor to defend the UK government position on the conflict.

There's many issues in this thread that are being conflated though they do intersect.
 
Emmersons_BrazillianDong said:
Well as you know. The equipment that was damaged was not being sold to Isreal but I'm not here to be pedantic nor to defend the UK government position on the conflict.

There's many issues in this thread that are being conflated though they do intersect.
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Ah ok I thought we were talking about what happened at the Elbit Systems site which certainly does supply defence equipment to the Israeli Military
 
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