07 Oct 11 | Uncategorized
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.
21 Sep 11 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
The Metropolitan police has backed down from its threat to use the Official Secrets Act to force Guardian journalists to reveal sources in the phone-hacking scandal investigation. The Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Mark Simmons, admitted that the attempt was “not appropriate.” Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian welcomed the withdrawal of the “ill-judged order”, and said that “threatening reporters with the Official Secrets Act was a sinister new device to get round the protection of journalists’ confidential sources.” Index condemned the efforts on Friday, and Chief Executive John Kampfner said that the move was “shocking” and “a direct attack on a free press.”
06 Sep 11 | Uncategorized
A US court of appeals ruled this past week that citizens — whether they’re journalists or not — have a right under the First Amendment to peacefully film or record police officers on the job in public. The question has come up repeatedly as the widespread use of sophisticated camera-ready cell phones has enabled a level of transparency and accountability in public safety that potentially makes every civilian on the street on a backstop against police misconduct.
Police officers from Maryland to California have cited vague state wiretap laws to not only object to the practice but also arrest citizens caught doing it. Some state laws make it illegal to record audio or video of a person without his or her consent. Police officers have also argued that such footage violates their privacy.
Many legal scholars, though, have countered that such logic can’t reasonably extend to police officers performing their duties in public — and that such a policy clearly violates the public interest. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously agreed, writing:
It is firmly established that the First Amendment’s aegis extends further than the text’s proscription on laws ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,’ and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. … The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.’
The case began in October of 2007 when Simon Glik, a lawyer, shot video footage with his cell phone of police officers in Boston whom he believed were using excessive force to arrest a young man. Glik objected to one of the officers, explained that he had recorded footage, and was promptly arrested himself. His cell phone was also taken.
The charges against Glik — which also included disturbing the peace — were dismissed by a judge several months later. Glik attempted to file an internal-affairs complaint with the Boston Police Department against the officers involved. When that complaint went nowhere, he filed a lawsuit, in February 2010, against the officers arguing that his civil rights under the First and Fourth Amendment had been violated.
In siding with Glik, the court stressed that the right to collect information on public officials in public belongs equally to journalists and civilian bystanders, particularly in the age of “citizen journalism” and ubiquitous camera phones. The judges wrote:
Changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.
The decision was praised this week by the New York Times editorial board, the ACLU and legal scholars.
Emily Badger is Index’s US editor
23 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
The English Defence League’s march into Tower Hamlets, scheduled for 3 September, has been met with a broad alliance of politicians and organisations — including council leaders from across the country, prominent trade unionists, religious leaders, the Canary Wharf Group, London Citizens and local LGBT organisations — calling for it to be banned. This week, a delegation from the Hope Not Hate coalition, led by London Assembly’s John Biggs and Rushanara Ali MP, presented a 25,000-name petition to Scotland Yard calling on Theresa May to ban the march, no doubt gaining inspiration from her recent decision on the Telford march earlier this month.
Of course, Tower Hamlets has been here before: Stepney in the 1930s, Brick Lane in the 1970s (and again in April 1999) and Millwall in the 1990s. The cosmetics are different but the fascist face beneath remains the same. The impact and attendant dangers of this march — into what the EDL claims is the “heart of militant Islam” and “the lions [sic] den”— are significant. The EDL is not planning a “peaceful” demonstration. The pattern is predictable: massive disruption to local communities and businesses, mobilisation of far-right activists from around the country ending in attacks on Muslims and other counter-demonstrators. So banning the march should be common sense: ban the march, stop the danger.
Unfortunately this logic is skin deep. When the Home Secretary banned the Telford march, it did nothing to prevent the EDL from staging a static protest. Nor did it prevent violent confrontations between the organisers and counter-demonstrators — there were 40 arrests. When the EDL’s Bradford march was banned last year, its members were still allowed to stage a static protest and, from their fenced-off park, they threw rocks and gas canisters at the police and counter-demonstrators. Some broke out of the pen and ran through the streets causing mayhem. During the Manchester demonstration in 2009, the police erected a steel fence around parts of Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of the city. The EDL circumnavigated the lockdown by marching from various assembly points (usually pubs) to the city centre. In the end, the bans achieved nothing.
I was born and raised on the Mile End Road, but I don’t believe the march should be banned for three reasons.
First, it will do nothing to prevent disorder and racist violence. If anything, it will still allow the EDL to hold a static demonstration as well as numerous parades into this area. And when they break out of it, they will turn Tower Hamlets, a densely populated inner-city borough with its warren-like streets, into a riot zone impossible to police.
Second, state intervention in protests is not something to be celebrated. Banning this march is a surely a harbinger of interventions in future protests not just those organised by the far right.
Third, the movement against the rise of fascism must not become dependent on the state. For inspiration, we have only to look at the Battle of Cable Street: the fascists came but they did not pass. Instead, local residents of diverse backgrounds united and fought back and dealt Oswald Mosley and his BUF the death blow.
If the EDL are to be defeated, it must be in the streets of Britain, in its front rooms, in its pubs. We are the ones that must do this — not the state.
Akkas Al-Ali is a playwright, director and dramaturg living in London.
