Causing a nuisance: from E P Thompson on the Eighteenth Century Black Acts to Extinction Rebellion 2019
Following the Metropolitan Police’s ban on Extinction Rebellion protests under the 1986 Public Order Act, which did not in fact work and the legality of which will be tested in the Courts next week, a theme in media commentary has been that while protest about climate change is all very well, the protesters have disrupted life in central London and the City and have generally been a nuisance.
That of course is all part of what protest is about and the dislike of the authorities for those who cause a nuisance to the current interests of the rich and powerful has a very long history.
In Whigs and Hunters his discussion of the Black Acts which were aimed at eighteenth century poachers, and which invariably invoked the death penalty for those caught, if a jury would convict, E P Thompson summed the matter up
At the level of affrays between poachers and keepers there was some equality in the contest. But at the point where the petty seriously inconvenienced the great, the entire apparatus of power and law could be brought to bear to the side of the latter. The Black Act put unprecedented legal power in the hands of men who had not a generalized, delegated interest, such as the maintenance of order, or even the maintenance of the privileges of their own class, but a direct and personal interest in the conviction of men who were a nuisance to them
Leave a Reply