A
ABBEY
Guest
only if tommy robinson was filming would anyone get arrested and that would be tommy
-
NEXT GAME:no idea
Sometime in August
Kick off unknown pm
No idea where
Definitely the Championship
Blackburn
- Thread starter OnlyOneTugay
- Start date
Barmitzvah Boy
Global winner of the 2021 Christmas Quiz 👊🤩🤩
TR was in contempt of Court and could have risked the outcome of the prosecution case. Not at all a clever move.
yoda
Senior Member
I thought they had already been convicted, the accused also asked for the Sikhs to be removed from the public gallery because they didn't want identifying
Police should be in there with truncheons (if they still have them) and tear gas.
yoda
Senior Member
They keep their truncheons for bonking rape victims these days and we have to keep quiet for the sake of cultural diversity
Thwaites have annoyed me in the past (though I'm not entirely saying they deserved this) but generally I regard tresspassing/squatters rights as red tape nonsense. Red tape and liars are a horrible combination but major factors in government. As much as people might sympathise with the police if they dealt with squatters in that manner they probably don't want to be prosecuted. I don't know if they protest to any significant extent but the police should put endless pressure on the government to have common sense laws over trespassers, squatters, etc. Of course the problem then is if they start calling strikes every 5 minutes. It's perfectly reasonable though for the police to be tired of this kind of thing. Just because they choose to do the job does not make it OK. In some ways dealing with red tape, etc is probably more irksome than dealing with murders, etc. You can't stop the latter entirely but you can damn sure bring common sense laws in to deal with gypsies, etc.
Should have gone down though and suggested they try Northchoke manor grounds (or Guide Security having recently found out who the owners are) next. Now that would be funny seeing those pompous and pretentious jackasses having to deal with it. Not ignoring Ribble Valley Inns as Northchoke have just sold those properties.
Should have gone down though and suggested they try Northchoke manor grounds (or Guide Security having recently found out who the owners are) next. Now that would be funny seeing those pompous and pretentious jackasses having to deal with it. Not ignoring Ribble Valley Inns as Northchoke have just sold those properties.
Last edited:
Otto Mann
Senior Member
Not true BB. T'was a sentencing hearing. He had asked both court officials and police for permission to film which was granted. He filmed for over an hour (Live stream) until he was arrested on a trumped up charge of "breach of the peace" and immediately hustled away in a police van. All these events were witnessed by more than 10,00 people who were watching his stream. He was then charged with contempt of court tried and sentenced, the whole thing from arrest onwards taking less than 3 hours. The guy is a political detainee and love him or loath him, this does not bode well for our once Great Britain.
Wilpshire Blue
Senior Member
£100k worth of damage at Thwaites. I find that figure hard to believe from the photos, unless they are factoring in lost production.
However, the perpetrators got off scot free even though they were known to be in the building.
It was hardly a smash and grab in the dead of night, was it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-44288992
However, the perpetrators got off scot free even though they were known to be in the building.
It was hardly a smash and grab in the dead of night, was it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-44288992
They are moving premises anyway so presumably such costs are more related to equipment. Of course they still need these premises for the interim but a few smashed windows (for instance) could be replaced with the cheapest possible type. Probably wouldn't do something so convoluted but who's to say this isn't some kind of insurance scam. A fire may have been too obvious so they could have cut a deal with these gypsies. Never know.
1700 pints certainly aren't worth £100,000 and surely transportable production assets will be insured anyway?
1700 pints certainly aren't worth £100,000 and surely transportable production assets will be insured anyway?
Steve Moss
Senior Member
Insurance should never benefit the criminal, as he or she or they did not pay the premium. If the owner doesn’t get the proceeds, then the insurer should (if it paid out to the owner). All the criminal should get is time behind bars. Or worse, cut off from public benefits.
What do you mean? If you're saying it shouldn't benefit the gypsies why the heck would they get an insurance payout for this? Certainly not on the "official" record and only if Thwaites are in cahoots with them. If you're agreeing this looks like a possible insurance scam then certainly the insurer should investigate.
Barmitzvah Boy
Global winner of the 2021 Christmas Quiz 👊🤩🤩
An independent legal system is vital to ensuring democracy, it appears that this has been the case in terms of TR. it looks to me that TR was looking to get arrested and become a martyr.
1. Why was Tommy Robinson arrested?
Robinson was arrested outside Leeds Crown Court having video recorded a number of men – including defendants involved in a live trial – entering the court building, and livestreaming the footage on Facebook in what he claimed was an attempt at legitimate court reporting. West Yorkshire police, having been alerted to his activities, arrested Lennon at the scene. The initial reports suggested that he was arrested for a suspected breach of the peace, but what is now clear from the judgment published today is that his actions in broadcasting details about the trial were in breach of reporting restrictions.
2. What are reporting restrictions?
The starting point of our criminal justice system is that justice must be seen to be done. However the law provides for exceptions to open justice, known generally as “reporting restrictions”. Reporting restrictions apply in a wide range of situations – from automatic restrictions preventing the identification of a complainant in a sexual allegation, to restrictions preventing reporting of Youth Court proceedings, to discretionary restrictions protecting the identity of child witnesses in the adult courts. Further details, if you are interested, can be found here.
One breed of restriction order is something called a “postponement order”, under section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. Postponement orders are not unusual, particularly where there are a series of linked trials – for example, where allegations of grooming rings involving 30 defendants are concerned, there will be several trials (it not being physically possible to accommodate 30 defendants in a single courtroom). To avoid jurors having their deliberations contaminated by what they might read or hear about the earlier linked trials, reporting of all of them is often postponed until the end. Where there is a separate-but-related issue, such as a contempt of court involving a third party, this can also be the subject of a section 4(2) order. The test is:
- Would a fair, accurate and contemporaneous report of the proceedings (or part thereof) published in good faith create a substantial risk of prejudice to the administration of justice in those or other proceedings?
- Is an order postponing the publication of such reports necessary and are its terms proportionate? Would such an order eliminate the risk of prejudice to the administration of justice? Could less restrictive measures achieve the objective?
- On the specific facts of this case, does the public interest in protecting the administration of justice outweigh the strong public interest in open justice?
This is what we had here. The judge had imposed a postponement order preventing the media from reporting on the ongoing trial until all linked trials had concluded.
Breaching a reporting restriction amounts to a contempt of court. Which is what Yaxley-Lennon admitted doing.
3. But I heard Tommy Robinson was arrested for a breach of the peace. What is a breach of the peace? How is a breach of the peace caused by someone simply filming?
Police officers have common law powers (i.e. powers not set out in statute) to arrest somebody where a breach of the peace is committed or where the officer reasonably believes it will be committed in the immediate future. As to what constitutes a breach of the peace, it is defined in case law as follows: “there is a breach of the peace whenever harm is actually done or is likely to be done to a person or in his presence to his property or a person is in fear of being so harmed through an assault, an affray, a riot, unlawful assembly or other disturbance.” (R v Howell[1982] Q.B. 416) As we can see, it’s a fairly broad definition.
The courts have confirmed that it covers situations where, for example, there are reasonable grounds to fear that a demonstrator or protestor is likely to incite violence, even violence against themselves. This appears to be applicable to the present case. Robinson provocatively filming defendants, selected deliberately by ethnicity, and streaming on Facebook for the edification of his cult, is the kind of thing which could, it might be argued, lead to a breach of the peace.
Once a person has been arrested for breaching the peace, the police have the power to detain that person where there is a real apprehension that if released they will renew the breach of the peace within a short time, and where the police believe that further detention is necessary to prevent this. Given Robinson’s history of interfering with criminal trials and his defiance towards court orders, one can see why the police may have genuinely feared that he would have simply returned to court if not detained. The power of detention is time-limited – the detainee must be released within 24 hours (if not charged), or for serious (indictable) offences, detention may be authorised up to 96 hours.
4. How can it be legal for somebody to be arrested for breach of the peace and then imprisoned for contempt?
It is perfectly common for a person to be arrested on suspicion of one offence, and then ultimately charged or dealt with for another. In this case, it appears that Yaxley-Lennon was arrested and detained for causing or threatening a breach of the peace, and that the court, upon being made aware of his activities, directed that he be brought to court to be dealt with for contempt of court. Even if his original arrest and detention had been unlawful (and there is nothing at all to suggest that it was), this would have absolutely no bearing on the contempt proceedings. The “breach of the peace” angle is a red herring.
5. So back up a step – what exactly is contempt of court?
Contempt of court is a broad, catch-all term for various offences against the administration of justice. The law(s) of contempt are designed to safeguard the fairness of legal proceedings and to maintain the authority and dignity of the court. Some contempts are set out in statute, including the aptly-named Contempt of Court Act 1981. This sets out what is referred to as “strict liability contempt” – the rule that it is a contempt to publish any matter which creates a substantial risk of serious prejudice or impediment to the course of justice in legal proceedings, irrespective of the intention behind the publication. There is a defence available to publishers (which includes newspapers, TV and social media users) who can show they were providing “a fair and accurate report of legal proceedings held in public, published contemporaneously and in good faith”, thus giving some latitude to the press and ensuring that the media do not shy away from accurate, factual reporting of criminal proceedings.
Other contempts are more eclectic, such as the prohibition on taking photographs or moving images inside a court building (or even drawing a picture – court sketch artists have to draw outside the court from memory – section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925).
There is also a common law offence of “criminal contempt”, which is defined by the courts as “conduct that denotes wilful defiance of, or disrespect towards the court, or that wilfully challenges or affronts the authority of the court or the supremacy of the law itself.” This might include refusing to answer questions in court, physically disrupting court proceedings, interfering with witnesses or jurors (where not charged as a distinct offence of witness intimidation or perverting the course of justice) or defying a judge’s order.
Which brings us back to Mr Yaxley-Lennon, and a sunny day in May last year at Canterbury Crown Court.
6. What happened at Canterbury Crown Court?
On 8 May 2017, during the course of a rape trial at Canterbury Crown Court involving four (Asian) defendants, Yaxley-Lennon attended court and attempted to film the defendants for an online broadcast entitled “Tommy Robinson in Canterbury exposing Muslim child rapists”. He was thwarted by the judge making arrangements for the defendants and jurors to leave court through alternative routes, and so settled for filming himself on camera, both on the court steps and inside the court building, preaching to his online followers about “Muslim paedophiles”. He was interrupted and told by court staff that recording was prohibited (section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925, as we’ve discussed above), but continued to record, insisting that he had been told by a different court that he was entitled to film the defendants (notwithstanding that court buildings are plastered with signs reminding people not to do this). His video diatribe – in which he said that “the paedophiles are hiding”, that the police had asked him not to “expose” them as paedophiles (presumably on the basis that they were, at that time, defendants in a live trial) but that “we will”, and that he would be “going round to their house” to catch the defendants on camera – thus continued. The judge hearing the rape trial was made aware, and he was brought before court to be dealt with for contempt of court.
The judge, HHJ Norton, dealt with Yaxley-Lennon on 22 May 2017. She found that he was in contempt by having filmed inside the court building, contrary to section 41, but was also in common law contempt by having continued to film having been told to stop by the court staff. The judge considered the content of his broadcast, and the real risk of his actions derailing the trial, and committed him to prison for 3 months, suspended for a period of 18 months. In practical terms, a suspended sentence means that the prison sentence (3 months) hangs over you for the operational period (18 months). If you remain offence-free and comply with any requirements the court makes, you will never have to serve your sentence. If you reoffend, the presumption in law is that you will serve that prison sentence, additional to whatever sentence you receive for the new offence.
7. So what you’re saying is that Tommy Robinson was given a suspended sentence simply for trying to report on a case? Free speech is truly dead.
No, ye of little brain. He was found to be in contempt of court and given a suspended sentence because his actions put a serious criminal trial in jeopardy. Running around a court building shouting “paedophile” at defendants during a live trial, or live-streaming defendants and members of the public – potentially including jurors – entering and exiting a court building against a tub thumping narration of “Muslim paedophile gangs”, is hardly conducive to ensuring a fair trial. And if there can’t be a fair trial, nobody gets justice. Not the accused, not the complainants, not the public. This is not theoretical – serious criminal trials have nearly collapsed because of the actions of people like Yaxley-Lennon.
We have a quaint tradition in England and Wales that trial by media should be avoided, and that trial on evidence heard in court is the fairest way to determine a person’s guilt. Therefore while criminal courts are open to the public, and it is absolutely fine to report soberly and accurately about ongoing criminal trials, anything which might prejudice or intimidate the jury is strictly forbidden. And this makes sense. It would be a nonsense, for example, to have strict laws preventing individuals from walking up to a juror to say, “The defendant you are trying is plainly a dirty paedophile”, but to allow broadcasters or tabloid columnists to trumpet that message to jurors through the media. Self-defined “free-speech advocates” – particularly a number on the other side of the Atlantic – have difficulty understanding this, so it’s worth pasting in full what HHJ Norton said:
“This contempt hearing is not about free speech. This is not about freedom of the press. This is not about legitimate journalism; this is not about political correctness; this is not about whether one political viewpoint is right or another. It is about justice, and it is about ensuring that a trial can be carried out justly and fairly. It is about ensuring that a jury are not in any way inhibited from carrying out their important function. It is about being innocent until proven guilty. It is not about people prejudging a situation and going round to that court and publishing material, whether in print or online, referring to defendants as “Muslim paedophile rapists”. A legitimate journalist would not be able to do that and under the strict liability rule there would be no defence to publication in those terms. It is pejorative language which prejudges the case, and it is language and reporting – if reporting indeed is what it is – that could have had the effect of substantially derailing the trial. As I have already indicated, because of what I knew was going on I had to take avoiding action to make sure that the integrity of this trial was preserved, that justice was preserved and that the trial could continue to completion without people being intimidated into reaching conclusions about it, or into being affected by “irresponsible and inaccurate reporting”. If something of the nature of that which you put out on social media had been put into the mainstream press I would have been faced with applications from the defence advocates concerned, I have no doubt, to either say something specific to the jury, or worse, to abandon the trial and to start again. That is the kind of thing that actions such as these can and do have, and that is why you have been dealt with in the way in which you have and why I am dealing with this case with the seriousness which I am.”
8. How is all that relevant to what took place on 25 May 2018?
It is relevant because, when passing the suspended sentence, HHJ Norton gave some fairly clear warnings to Yaxley-Lennon:
“[Y]ou should be under no illusions that if you commit any further offence of any kind, and that would include, I would have thought, a further contempt of court by similar actions, then that sentence of three months would be activated, and that would be on top of anything else that you were given by any other court.
In short, Mr Yaxley-Lennon, turn up at another court, refer to people as “Muslim paedophiles, Muslim rapists” and so and so forth while trials are ongoing and before there has been a finding by a jury that that is what they are, and you will find yourself inside. Do you understand?“
And what did Yaxley-Lennon go and do?
9. What did he go and do?
As we know now, he went and committed a contempt of court by reporting on court proceedings. He did so in a way that expressed his “views” on the guilt or otherwise of the defendants, creating a substantial risk of serious prejudice to the proceedings by jurors seeing or becoming aware of his ill-informed ramblings. This could have led to an application by the defence advocates to discharge the jury and start afresh, potentially meaning vulnerable complainants having to go through the trauma of a trial all over again, or even an application to “stay” (bring to an end) the proceedings altogether.
Importantly, Yaxley-Lennon admitted that he was in contempt of court.
And he was committed to prison for 10 months, with the suspended sentence of 3 months activated and directed to run consecutively. Exactly as he’d been warned.
10. He was tried in secret on the day he was arrested, with no lawyers and the media were banned from reporting what had happened. This is Kafka on steroids, surely?
Contempt proceedings do not attract a jury trial. The procedure for a court dealing with a criminal contempt is set out in the Criminal Procedure Rules. These allow for a “summary procedure”, where the court, having made its own enquiries and offered a contemnor (for that is the official term) the chance to seek legal advice, can deal with the offender straight away. The Crown Court can commit a contemnor to prison for up to two years. There is nothing unusual in him being dealt with on the day of the contempt. Courts are required to deal with contempts as swiftly as possible. There is no suggestion of any prejudice; Yaxley-Lennon was legally represented by a barrister and would have received full legal advice.
He also wasn’t tried in secret; his contempt hearing was heard in public, with members of the press present. However, the judge imposed temporary reporting restrictions (under section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 again), postponing reporting of the details of Lennon’s contempt until the trial, and the subsequent related trial, had concluded. This, you may think, is for obvious reasons. A media circus and orchestrated attempt at martyrdom by Lennon and his deranged followers – as was indeed attempted when the restrictions were defied by far-right blogs and foreign news outlets – would present exactly the sort of distraction that threatened to disrupt the very serious criminal proceedings that the judge was desperately seeking to keep on the rails.
In the event, the repeated breaches of the order by foreign news outlets and social media users meant that the judge’s intentions were thwarted. An application to discharge the reporting restriction was made on 29 May 2018 and the judge agreed that, in light of what had happened over the Bank Holiday weekend, restrictions should be lifted to allow publication of the facts.
It is also worth noting that there is a Practice Direction dealing with situations where defendants are imprisoned for contempt of court. This requires that full judgments be published online and handed to the media where a person is committed to prison for contempt. As we can expect imminently.
As for the suggestion (by UKIP among others) that nobody has ever before been found in contempt of court and a postponement order made preventing the media from immediately reporting it, a handy example can be found on 22 May 2017, where one Stephen Yaxley-Lennon was found to be in contempt at Canterbury, and a postponement order was made restricting publication until the end of the substantive trial.
Steve Moss
Senior Member
If I own property and someone vandalizes it, causing a $1,000 in damage, then:
1. The vandals owe the insurer $1,000 if my insurer pays me; or,
2. The vandals owe me $1,000 if my insurer declines to pay (whether the damage is not covered by insurance or other reasons);, or,
3. Some combination of 1 and 2 if the insurer makes a partial payment.
In no event should the vandals be let off the hook because I, as an owner, was prudent in purchasing insurance. The vandals pay me or they pay my insurer.
Should have realised this is what you meant. I agree with the principle though obviously it depends on the the vandals income/assets. So insurance is generally unavoidable really especially for a business with employees and that's mandatory anyway from a liability standpoint. I don't think it's mandatory for every kind of business. If it isn't obviously it would still be risky and foolish not to have it.
The insurer should probably be the one to pursue financial damages against the vandals. For the business owner (as long as the claim has no issues) should only have to deal with the insurance claims. That's the whole point of insurance policies first and foremost. Plus have the police/courts file any court charges against the vandals, etc.
I'm not that familiar with insurance law for every last detail beyond the general concept. I don't own any property/cars (I've said before that owning a car would be more stress than it's worth for me) and I'm happy to risk not having insurance for things like average priced laptops. Well I'm not entirely certain what the average price is but for £300-£400 models insurance is almost always a waste of money. I've never had any regrets in the past (if I ever lose money on a laptop because of no insurance who's to say it wouldn't be an unfortunate one-off anyway) though obviously if I paid £2000 for a laptop insurance would be far more of a consideration. I probably wouldn't pay that much for one anyway whatever my finances are like. I guess it depends too on whether you pay upfront in full or take monthly instalments. I won't pay for a Tv license all in one go (oppose the license fee completely but for things like BBC Iplayer you can't really avoid it now) but I don't mind doing so for a laptop.
Last edited:
Steve Moss
Senior Member
Theno, that is a good article you posted on the Tommy Robinson situation. The writer only hurt his credibility, however, by referring to Mr. Robinson’s followers as deranged or a cult. It may be true (I have no idea), but it creates the appearance of bias.