Verse
Scheele, Roy
Nevertheless, the legal position, as I understand it, is complex. On the one hand, it is important that essentially political decisions should be taken by politicians, not policemen. On the...
...The plot's gone all awry...
...Of course, in this domain the law is designed to be more "educative" than "punitive": its object is more to encourage a certain atmosphere than to bring about remedies for all particular offenses...
...Secondly, prosecutions under it have to be authorized by the Attorney General (the legal ofricer of the government, and thus a political person) and not just by the Director of Public Prosecutions...
...Thus the Home Secretary is the only person who can actuatly ban an otherwise legal march through the streets: and he can only do so on the recommendation of the local police chief...
...In the Lewisham case, it seems with hindsight obvious (as many sensible local people pleaded at the time) that the police should have swallowed their pride, and sought a ban...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ROY SCHEELE A COUNTERPOISE The garden in July starts suddenly to lean this way and that, under green...
...Of course, in addition to the Public Order Act (which governs the banning of demonstrations) there is the Race Relations Act, which makes incitement to racial hatred a crime...
...The only solution, then, is "political...
...The long-term effects on policeimmigrant relations can hardly be other than bad...
...One doesn't want possibly biased politicians interfering with activities that the local peep!e, including police, know they can control and which are not provocative...
...On the other, it is important that the police should not seek to interfere with people's rights to demonstrate unless this is manifestly necessary in order to protect other, equally important rights...
...The police are naturally reluctant to admit that they cannot handle something in their own field...
...The dill has grown so tall it looks us in the eye like a peacock's tail let fly, and the impending ball at the green onion's tip, as if about to fall or be toppled after all, has spun off at the lip of balance, in the nick of time, now letting rip with these little fingertipsize blossoms...
...Yet the law relating to all these matters is intricate and full of pitfalls...
...This is precisely why the National Front so constantly proclaims that all its opponents need to do if offended by their activities, is to prosecute them under the Race Relations Act...
...The clear conclusion is forced upon one, then, that the application of purely legal remedies is not likely to have much effect in problems of this kind...
...There's a rick of them, arrayed like stars around a center, thick as thieves, awning-striped and quick with seed...
...While glinting jars await the strutting dill, between the rows, like scars, the rut fills in as far as the light can sprawl or spill...
...But it is also because (as in the case of obscenity) the judgments involved are subjective...
...There is little doubt that what happened has given people a general impression that the police are more concerned to protect the right of the National Front to march than they are to protect the people caught unwittingly in the middle, or victims of Front abuse who cannot protect themselves...
...The National Front are adept at keeping within the letter of the law while deliberately breaking its spirit...
...On the other hand, the political decision to ban a march must be taken by a democratically accountable person...
...The fact that the police have also been shown t o be unable to cope with a situation they partly helped to create, has only exacerbated the problem...
...Legal forms of words can never at one and the same time be precise enough to catch the offender and wide-ranging enough to prevent the spirit of the legislation being flouted (as distinct from the mere letter...
...This is why people like Enoch Powell have never been prosecuted under the Act, whereas lesser fry have...
...Yet this arrangement has its own dangers...
...In other words, if it is thought politically unwise to prosecute for fear that the result might be worse than the offense, then nothing happens...
...Thus the police often have covertly to make "political" decisions precisely in the name of political neutrality...
...This is the political result of an attempt to be non-political...
...But it also Commonweal: 583...
...It is also possible that they tend in any case to look favorably on groups which stand for more "order" than on "anarchists...
...they therefore tend to refuse to ask for a ban, especially when the march as such (as distinct from the behavior of those provoked by it) seems likely to be "peaceful...
...But in the present sort of case, this act is virtually useless...
...There is obvious merit in this arrangement...
...For one thing, the incitement has to happen before it can be stopped...
...First of all, this means having a public which is politically intelligent enough to see what is happening, and active enough to take part in opposing it...
Vol. 104 • September 1977 • No. 19
