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UK: Court victory for Fairford protesters

01 December 2006

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The House of Lords Appeal Court ruled that the police were were wrong to detain two coachloads of 120 people on their way to protest at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire in March 2003. Their lawyer told the Law Lords that people had the right to demonstrate peacefully on matter of great public interest.

Law Lords judgment (full-text, pdf)

Statement from Fairford Coach Action campaign (pdf)

Statement from Bindmans (pdf)

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "This is a very important ruling. The police have taken upon themselves the power to stop demonstrators assembling on a number of occasions and have got away with it. It is not for the police to decide who can protest and who cannot, their job is to uphold the law when it is breached and not to pre-emptively curtail a basic right in a democratic society".

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