It is more than 20 years since the last thorough, book-length treatment of public order law in this country was published. Since then, legislation has progressively tightened the constraints on public protest, even as courts have started to take the right to peaceful assembly and protest more seriously under the influence of the Human Rights Act 1998. Protest is now governed by a complex mix of human rights, criminal legislation, statutory regulation, restrictive court orders, private rights and police discretion. David Mead's new book fills the need for a systematic, up-to-date analysis and evaluation of the combined effect of these various legal elements.
Mr. Mead has organised the book thematically rather than according to the different sources of relevant law. This allows him to bring out the complex interplay of statute, common law and international law, and of criminal law, police powers, judicial regulation and human rights. He starts by arguing that a right of peaceful protest has developed from unpromising beginnings in the common law, and then examines the foundations of the right and factors affecting people's ability to exercise it, including not only the legal framework but also sociological aspects such as the effect of the way in which protests are organised and factors affecting how the police respond (chapters 1 to 3). Interference with the right must be justifiable. He illuminates the many ways in which interference occurs and offers sustained, critical assessment of their justifications. The book is a treasure trove of sustained legal exposition and analysis and intelligently critical reflection on a field in which conflicting rights and interests abound, making good use of relevant literature as well as law. (The bibliography is a valuable resource in itself.)
Chapters 4 and 5 offer a rounded, three-dimensional review of the vexed problem of finding places to protest in the face of private property rights and other interests, and ways in which law regulates the manner of peacefully communicating views in public or quasi-public space. Discussion of individual cases becomes a series of case-studies of the impact of factors such as the type of protest (Mead offers a persuasive typology in chapter 1) on the extent of the right and justifiability of interfering with it. The author's examination of D.P.P. v. Jones and Lloyd [1999] 2 A.C. 240 (pp. 194–203) exemplifies the approach. He analyses each judgment in detail, without losing sight of overarching themes, values, and the way in which law from different sources intermingles and interacts. Having from time to time tried to write about protest and public order, your reviewer has to applaud Mead's achievement in keeping control of a plethora of problematic elements.
Chapter 6 turns from communicative protest in which any obstruction to or disruption of other people's activities is an unwanted side-effect of communicative behaviour, to direct action, which uses disruption of other people's activities as the medium of communication. Among its merits is that it includes an excellent discussion of using the law of harassment and trespassory assembly to restrain this kind of communication. Inevitably direct action may lead to violence, and laws concerned mainly with violent protest may have a significant impact on people's freedom to undertake non-violent direct action, but Mead ensures that we do not become distracted from his main focus, the right to peaceful protest.
Chapter 7 deals with preventive powers of the police and how courts' approaches to them have changed. The discussion of powers to prevent breaches of the peace and R (Laporte) v. Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary [2007] 2 A.C. 105 is another example of the value of the author's ability to provide a rich, contextual case-study of a delicate problem in policing and freedom of protest (pp. 335–348). The chapter also covers ASBOs, the strange, preventative, civil court orders which make unlawful conduct by the people subject to them that would be lawful if done by anyone else and in the process (as Mead points out at p. 363) deprive the subject of protections offered to defendants in the criminal process. The extraordinary character of these powers has been obscured and they have come to be regarded as normal to the point where they are disturbingly common. Mead's critique is detailed, scholarly and timely.
Chapter 8 looks at an aspect rarely considered by authors who approach protest from a public-law perspective: the potential effect of private-law proceedings on people's ability to protest. Once again, this is an illuminating discussion, which ends (p. 398) by asking whether it should be left to private actors to private actors and private-law litigation to determine the scope and extent of protest, in view of its public value.
The final chapter draws together the threads that have run throughout the book, and identifies the intertwining of private- and public-law restrictions on freedom of protest as particularly problematic, as the importance of public interests is likely to be lost sight of among private-law technicality and the threat of an award of costs against protestors who are usually not over-burdened with wealth. Like the whole of the book, this chapter exemplifies the value of deep scholarship, careful reflection on concepts and principles placed in their social and economic context, and balanced judgement.
In short, this is a fine book. By providing high-quality and deep legal analysis and principled critique in a clear conceptual and social framework based on exhaustive research, Dr. Mead has enriched the literature of public protest and public law. It is increasingly unusual for a book on law to be valuable alike to students, scholars, practitioners and judges. In the Preface, Dr. Mead thanks his family who have lost out as a result of his preoccupation over the many years that were dominated by the book. Grateful readers, while sympathising, can reassure them that (for us at least) their suffering was worthwhile.
