May Day protest is a test case for police ‘containment’

Lois Austin was one of some 3000 people held within a police cordon at Oxford Circus on May Day 2001 for up to seven hours.

Since there were no toilets, both men and women had to relieve themselves in the roadway.

Ms Austin was one of two people who claimed damages for false imprisonment and unlawful detention. A member of the Socialist Party, she had been attending May Day demonstrations for nearly 20 years.

Their claims were dismissed by Mr Justice Tugendhat in the High Court in 2005, and the two lost an appeal last year. Ms Austin, 39, has been given leave to appeal to the House of Lords at a hearing scheduled for November.

If she wins, the police would no longer be able to use a tactic that is credited with preventing millions of pounds worth of damage to shops in the West End and businesses in the City.

Her solicitor, Louise Christian, said: "This case is important because it will establish whether it is permissible for the police to use containment tactics when policing demonstrations. The police argue it was necessary because some of the demonstration was violent. Our client was not involved in any

violence and needed to leave to collect her child from the nursery."

The second claimant, Geoffrey Saxby, 52, was not a demonstrator but said he had been in the area on business. He has gone abroad and is taking no further part in the case.

The "Sale of the Century" demonstration came a year after protesters had torn up turf in Parliament Square, defaced Churchill's statue and seriously damaged a McDonald's restaurant in Whitehall.

As May Day 2001 approached, Scotland Yard feared serious injuries and even deaths. Ken Livingstone, as Mayor, wrote an article in the Evening Standard urging people to stay away from what he described as "a deliberate attempt to create destruction in the capital".

But protesters made their way up Regent Street from Haymarket, stopping when they reached the busy junction with Oxford Street. It was at this point that the police decided to set up a full cordon. Senior officers neither intended nor foresaw that demonstrators would be held for any more than two or three hours. Several attempts at controlled dispersals were thwarted by disturbances. Ms Austin will be represented at the Lords appeal by Heather Williams QC because her previous counsel, Keir Starmer QC, has been appointed Director of Public Prosecutions. Scotland Yard has briefed David Pannick QC, co-author of a leading textbook on human rights.

Pannick persuaded the Court of Appeal that the police behaved lawfully in containing the demonstrators, even though there was no evidence that either of the two claimants was about to commit a breach of the peace.

He said senior officers had no alternative if they were to avoid the imminent risk of serious violence and damage to property.

The Court of Appeal agreed, adding that containment did not amount to the "arbitrary detention" prohibited by Article Five of the Human Rights Convention.

Pannick will urge the law lords to uphold that decision, arguing if necessary that the cordon was permitted by exceptions to Article Five.

We have not seen similar May Day demonstrations in London since 2001. This may be because the police tactics were so effective. Or it may be because the events of 11 September that year changed everything.

But as Mr Justice Tugendhat observed, 9/11 makes it all the more important for the police to know what powers they have to detain a large crowd of law-abiding people when potential terrorists may be among them.