Re:China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protest...
by pjc50 on Monday July 01, 2019 @04:56AM
(#20323591)
The public order act is extremely abusable, but it's intended to be that way. Note the date; it was right in the middle of the Thatcherite war on demonstrators, just after the Orgreave battles with striking miners and a few years after the Bloody Sunday firing on demonstrators and subsequent whitewash.
The British public (and especially press) is quite conservative, and prefer the maintenance of "order" to the extent of cheering on violence against demonstrators.
The practical use of S5POA is not for criminalising random swearing, but specifically to give police a pretext for arresting people who haven't committed a crime but are otherwise upset at being stopped by the police.
Peak silliness may have been the 1994 attempt to ban raves, characterised by "repetitive beats": http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/enacted (s63). Peak violence may have been the "kettling" of thousands of demonstrators in Oxford circus for hours in the early 2000s.
The British public (and especially press) is quite conservative, and prefer the maintenance of "order" to the extent of cheering on violence against demonstrators.
The practical use of S5POA is not for criminalising random swearing, but specifically to give police a pretext for arresting people who haven't committed a crime but are otherwise upset at being stopped by the police.
Peak silliness may have been the 1994 attempt to ban raves, characterised by "repetitive beats": http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/enacted (s63). Peak violence may have been the "kettling" of thousands of demonstrators in Oxford circus for hours in the early 2000s.