UK: Campaigners' victory as law lords uphold right to protest

[muriel_volestrangler]

Anti-war campaigners scored a landmark victory yesterday when five law lords unanimously upheld the right to protest and ruled that police had acted unlawfully in detaining Iraq war protesters and forcibly turning them back.

Lord Bingham, the senior law lord, said the Human Rights Act had brought about a "constitutional shift", creating for the first time a right to protest which previous law had been "reluctant and hesitant" to acknowledge.

In what Amnesty International called "a case of fundamental importance for the right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest", the lords allowed an appeal by the protesters, who had been stopped from attending a rally at RAF Fairford in March 2003, hours before the Gloucestershire base was used for bombing raids on Iraq.
...
But the law lords ruled that both actions were unlawful and that freedom of expression was "an essential foundation of democratic society".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,,1971586,00.html

And from Steve Bell:

[LeftishBrit]

1. Excellent!