Will the arrival of elected police commissioners politicise how officers respond to popular concerns about unpopular issues? If artistic expression sparks controversy how will newly accountable police chiefs manage the already fraught competing demands of keeping the electorate sweet, and meeting the requirements of human rights legislation?.
With the arts — some like them, some don’t. Some walk away from things they don’t like, others exercise their right to protest. The threat to public order, potential or actual, is a core policing issue.
Thus Birmingham police prevented the screening of Penny Woolcock’s film One Day about local gangs; Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti, dealing with tensions within the Sikh community, was cancelled after protests turned violent and police could not guarantee the safety of theatre staff; police upheld concerns by some members of the Somali community that music is un-Islamic and banned a musical performance in Bristol.
These and many other similar cases in recent years illustrate the police’s an unprecedented role as arbiters of freedom of expression in the arts. A proposed “heavyweight” independent review of policing inEnglandandWalesled by former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens should address this.
Elected commissioners must manage the tension between the popular expectations that put them in post and the unpopular causes that police are sometimes expected, even required, to defend.
Yet currently there’s no clear practice. When the Belgrade Theatre Coventry premiered Bhatti’s follow-up play Behud – Beyond Belief, an imaginative response to the cancellation of Behzti, the theatre was initially asked to pay £10,000 in policing costs, the local force applying rules designed for commercial sports events, to public art.
This is problematic political, legal and cultural territory. Beyond fulfilling their core duties — to maintain law and order, to prevent and detect crime — the Human Rights Act imposes on the police a qualified obligation not to interfere with the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and protest — and a positive obligation to take appropriate steps to protect those rights.
Case law advises: “In determining whether or not a positive obligation exists, regard must be had to the fair balance that has to be struck between the general interest of the community and the interests of the individual, the search for which balance is inherent throughout the Convention.”
When “taking those appropriate steps” means the police supporting an unpopular, minority interest — enabling a play to go ahead rather than sending officers out detecting crime, protecting property — it is a tough call as things stand.
With elected commissioners in place, especially when resources are limited, supporting an individual artist’s right to freedom of expression could look like a real vote loser.
After the riots in August David Cameron made the case for elected police commissioners as part of the solution “to mend[ing] our broken society…they will provide that direct accountability so you can finally get what you want when it comes to policing.”
Following up later that week in the Sunday Express newspaper, under the headline “Rights in my Sights”, Cameron talked of “scoring a clear line between right and wrong through every neighbourhood and backing it up with the full force of the law”.
By challenging the rights agenda in the name of a moral crusade, Cameron set alarm bells ringing for free expression. The right to freedom of expression is about the rights of the minority, and artists are always the minority.
Cameron’s claim that “our reforms mean that the police are going to answer directly to the people” runs the risk of setting up misleading expectations and empowering those who can put the power of numbers behind their sense of cultural offence.
It is important that any “contract” between an elected commissioner and his or her electorate includes the understanding that the police will do things that the majority may not like, in the interests of democracy and in the interests of a vibrant and provocative culture.
This means more freedom of expression, not less, reinforced by better information about our rights and responsibilities. We need artists to be free to discuss even the most uncomfortable truths and now more than ever to speak truth to power, to call authority to account.
