Warning for campaigns (96)

Fri 22 Aug 08, 5:49 PM
tromaville
UK, 8 yrs
Sean Kirtley was sent down for 4.5 years recently for conspiracy. He did not commit a crime, even local plod said he was always polite and quiet on demos. He was sent down because he updated the web page for the campaign and also talked to most of the people on his phone. The police claimed therefore that he was the organiser. As orgainser he became liable for actions committed by other people. Just thought I'd send out the warning in light of recent posts about campaigning.
http://supportsean.wordpress.com/

22 Aug 08, 5:56 PM
xjames
UK(SS), 2 yrs It's illegal to organise activities which seek to disrupt contractual arrangements between animal testing labs and their suppliers. This law was brought in specifically to protect Huntingdon Life Sciences whose suppliers (banks, auditors, lawyers etc) were targetted by largely peaceful protests in an attempt to close down HLS by cutting off their partners.
It's a bad law. But has no relevance whatsoever to any CJIA or BDSM-related campaigning as there is no law which bans organising peaceful campaigning save in the area of animal testing companies.
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22 Aug 08, 6:01 PM
ropeburn
UK, 7 yrs
That may well be the case James but it reads to me like another nail in the coffin of liberty in this mother of all democracies.

22 Aug 08, 6:06 PM
CookieMonster
UK(RH), 3 yrs
"He never himself actually broke the law during any protests, the police were present for most of the demonstrations he attended.
He was found guilty of Conspiracy to interfere with contractual relationships...."
Sounds about right, these groups have hardly led peacefull campaigns hence the law banning them.
Looks a nice friendly kind of chap... http://supportsean.wordpress.com/about/

22 Aug 08, 6:08 PM
tromaville
UK, 8 yrs
James the worry is that an organiser can be held responsible for actions other than her own and that organiser now means web person/one who phones most people. Not the specific SOCA section that he was charged on.

22 Aug 08, 6:08 PM
CookieMonster
UK(RH), 3 yrs

ropeburn wrote:
That may well be the case James but it reads to me like another nail in the coffin of liberty in this mother of all democracies.
Well if we go round peoples houses at the dead of night, vandalise their cars or property, place bombs under cars, send hate mail, threaten and harrass their families then no doubt our "liberty" would be nailed as well.

22 Aug 08, 6:14 PM
tromaville
UK, 8 yrs

CookieMonster wrote:
Well if we go round peoples houses at the dead of night, vandalise their cars or property, place bombs under cars, send hate mail, threaten and harrass their families then no doubt our "liberty" would be nailed as well.

What are you on about? Sean wasn't charged with any illegal act like that! If he'd been charged with that then you'd have a point, but he wasn't. The police even admited most of the demos had been organised with their consent
Please stop trying to de-rail this thread. It's about people beinmg targetted as organisers because they update web pages etc. Any campaign can be charged with "Conspiracy to ..." type
Edited 22 Aug 08, 6:16 PM by tromaville

22 Aug 08, 6:15 PM
redcat
UK(PE), 5 yrs

ropeburn wrote:
That may well be the case James but it reads to me like another nail in the coffin of liberty in this mother of all democracies.
and considering how fond Nulabour are of loopholes....
how long before the animal rights law is extended...and extended....
just to fill the loopholes you understand...not take away any liberties..just to fill the loopholes.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/objectification_in...
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. � Bertrand Russel.

22 Aug 08, 6:16 PM
xjames
UK(SS), 2 yrs
tromaville wrote:
James the worry is that an organiser can be held responsible for actions other than her own and that organiser now means web person/one who phones most people. Not the specific SOCA section that he was charged on.

Inciting violence or arranging for violence to be committed has always been illegal. In terms of organising a protest, it's only illegal if the protest is illegal per se (e.g. if it is designed interfering with contractual arrangements involving animal testing companies, or it's around parliament square without the required police consent.)
If you organise a peaceful legal protest and some firebrand starts kicking out, you can't be held legally responsible.
If you organise an illegal protest or violent action, then you're fair game.
Happy to be corrected on this if someone can provide a link to the relevent law.
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Edited 22 Aug 08, 6:17 PM by xjames

22 Aug 08, 7:05 PM
Degenerate
UK, 21 mths

tromaville wrote:
Warning for campaigns
Sean Kirtley was sent down for 4.5 years recently for conspiracy. He did not commit a crime, even local plod said he was always polite and quiet on demos. He was sent down because he updated the web page for the campaign and also talked to most of the people on his phone. The police claimed therefore that he was the organiser. As orgainser he became liable for actions committed by other people. Just thought I'd send out the warning in light of recent posts about campaigning.
http://supportsean.wordpress.com/
Aw thanks for this, but I can't help but be tempted to say..
Warning. Fearmongering is the lowest form of anti-activism.
But seriously, it's the single most pervasive method of scaring people out of speaking up for themselves and fighting injustice. The fear that anyone may listen into our phone calls. Or intercept our emails.
Yep they can. But if we're not doing bad, it doesn't matter that much (apart from in principle). We just bear it in mind that nothing is private and nothing is confidential so all we can do is limit unnecessary circulation.

I think how this is treated comes down to motivation of the police. They have no reason to do this to anyone from CAAN, we're small fry. if we were organising some kind of dangerous direct actions we would be a target for this, but that's not what we're doing.
To even stand a chance you at least need to be breaking some kind of law. Asking for advice is not against the law (not yet anyway).
Re another police investigation point which came up in the other thread about police knowing CAAN were coming. Of course they knew, we emailed about 300 people last night a press release to tell them where we were going .
De
ACTION NOTICE 22nd August LONDON - http://www.informedconsent.co.uk/weblogs/C_A_A_N... - COME WITH US OR JOIN IN FROM HOME! - CJIB Wiki and Seenoevil forum: - http://www.seenoevil.org.uk - The times they are a-changin' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ_XwLSN45I - FREEDOM NOW!

22 Aug 08, 7:08 PM
TheTroll
5 mths Remember that thing I said about networking with groups in other countries?

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