Protesters charged

[Sapphire387]

A woman has apparently been charged for a 'breach of the peace' for holding up a sign that read 'fuck imperialism, abolish the monarchy'. A man has been charged with the same, for shouting at Andrew and calling him 'a sick old man'.

AIBU to find this deeply concerning and an attack on freedom of speech?

Whether pro or anti-monarchy, I think we should all be allowed to express our views on this.

YABU - they should have been charged.
YANBU - they should not have been charged.

The country was already on the brink of a very slippery slope as far as freedom of expression. One particularly disturbing example is the police 'black lists' of people deemed to have committed 'hate speech' who have never been charged with any crime. Even the definition of hate speech is incredibly murky these days. Apparently, it encompasses the phrase 'adult human female'.

If even Andrew Marr is on record as saying he thinks this is disturbing and dystopian, you know the country has a real problem. This isn't cancel culture: it's censorious, oppressive, and very worrying.

As is demonstrative, performative mourning for someone most people never met, but that's an aside. The only good news is that attention is being drawn directly to this and it's garnering a very large audience. If it opens up a discussion, that has to be a good thing.

This is great news. All protestors should be charged including those ridiculous climate charge ones, the vegan ones etc etc.

They’re all just hateful people trying to make everyone else’s life difficult.

Fucking insane in my opinion. Especially the guy who just protested Charles. Fuck that. If it was another country we’d all be condemning them for it.

I’m already sick of the enforced mourning.

Great news. Let's make legitimate protest illegal.

You realise the kind of road down which that might lead?

Indeed. And it's giving quite interesting mileage to those who would claim a hereditary constitution flies in the face of democratic values.

It’s their own fault. If they can’t protest without spewing hateful bile and causing issues for everyone else they shouldn’t be allowed to do so at all.

HATEFUL speech? What, #NotMyKing?

I suspect the people who have been arrested are likely being so for their own good, because there are too many people around who can't accept a difference of opinion without resorting to violence, as we've already witnessed with the two rotund halfwits who physically assaulted the young lad verbally mocking a known sexual predator.

No that was brilliant, he's just there one minute and gone the next. He knew that would be controversial and so was probably prepared for the fact some would try and remove him, i don't think he should have been arrested though.

I am not into the Royals at ALL, but even I can understand that there's a time and a place ... and this wasn't it!

Honestly, the behaviour of some people is disgraceful. Anything goes, there’s freedom of speech and there’s having some form of decorum to actually behave in a respectful manner.
Time and place and this is neither.
Arresting them is heavy handed, nothing wrong with pulling them away and giving them a talking to.

Were protesters arrested at Margaret thatchers funeral?
I recall protests against Hirohito and the chinese premiere being actively surpressed many mins ago.

Nah, these anti royalists/embittered people, make the rules up as they go along. Free speech is always advocated, so long as it's in the name of something they believe in. That's why I don't take their views seriously. What has been shown, are the gutter standards, some are willing to stoop to. Then again, these will be the same folk, who defended fuck the police placards. Pissing over someone's death, like vultures. Yuk.

Yes your using your words to spread hate onto a family which has just lost a family member. Really think you could just turn up any funeral/wake/memorial service and just spew hatred with no consequences it’s a called verbal assault. So don’t be ridiculous. Arrest the lot of em! Let them do time. It really isn’t the place right now for this sort of nonsense.

Many are also forgetting these are the sam sorts blocking our roads for climate change. Throwing food at politicians. It’s about time we made a show of them.

That's assault, plain and simple.

It's offensive to YOU.

That does not make it hate speech. You can argue the toss til the cows come home about whether or not it was 'appropriate' to make such a demonstration in front of a cortege (it wasn't a funeral), just as it's not appropriate to harass women attempting to access the right to a termination (not that society has ever given a shiny shit about the rights of women, as is amply being demonstrated now with the censorious attitudes taken toward those of us who dare to request same-sex facilities.

What the OP was specifically asking is whether this should be an arrestable offence.

Anyone claiming that it should, IMO should be careful what they wish for.

I'm glad he's been dealt with in this way. It's all very well having an opinion and having freedom of speech but what he did, screaming abuse during the queens procession was out of order.
He carried on shouting it wasn't like he just screamed that one line, but his voice was drowned out by members of the crowd, who knows what else he was saying but the rest of the crowd would have heard it.
Little prick should have more respect, not just for the queen but for the rest of her family, and the people around who were paying their respects.

Let’s face it there are some people who just want to be noticed. There are many occasions where one could protest against the monarchy but they choose now. It is just bad taste but then these people don’t appear to know when things are appropriate and when not. If people want to do an anti-monarchy protest I have no problem with them but surely not at the Queens funeral. If I wanted to protest against a political party I wouldn’t do so at the funeral of one of their leaders. Unfortunately people use freedom as an expression for their own license.

The arrests plus all the e-boards beaming images of the Queen make us on par with North Korea. I think that bill was initially intended to curtail those people gluing themselves to the pavement and buildings and the BLM protests but of course can now be wielded to dismantle anything remotely anti-facist.

😅😅

Really tired of this trope. The "time and place" is the proclamation of an unqualified, quite stupid man becoming head of state. That's exactly the time and place to protest the same.

Indeed, and that's in the wake of legislation that made protest illegal (of course temporarily whilst COVID restricted so many freedoms, and warnings were posted right here on this site about why that's a very dangerous idea). The Sarah Everard vigil and its aftermath should have been a serious cautionary tale.

Now, it seems, the precedent's been set. And it's the staid, state-broadcaster the BBC now expressing deep concerns about the trajectory this is taking, not just a bunch of vocal cranks on Twitter.

'Those who desire to give up freedom for security will not have, and do not deserve, either one'.

YANBU.

I don't think it was an appropriate place or time to protest at funeral aspects but at most I think they should have been moved for their own safety.

Though protests at proclamations I think frankly that's different and they should have been allowed to protest at those as long as they were peaceful.

Charging them is wrong I think - and I don't think this should be an arrestable offence.

I think you need to go to North Korea. Have you ever been to a country where there is a military dictatorship? If you had been there you wouldn’t compare this country with it.

Really tired of this trope. The "time and place" is the proclamation of an unqualified, quite stupid man becoming head of state. That's exactly the time and place to protest the same.

This. The Queen is dead, long live the King. Right? It's not like there's an election to protest.