Arrests for ‘’conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’ after police break into a Quaker meeting house. Whatever happened to the ‘Freeborn Englishman’. Whatever happened to the Human Rights lawyer currently occupying 10 Downing St?
On Thursday 27th March around 30 police officers broke into a Quaker Meeting house in Westminster. It is a place of religious worship. They arrested six women who were holding a discussion about future protests on Palestine and Climate. Reportedly the six were later released on bail, with no further action taken against one.
The Quakers condemned the police action noting that it was the first time in living memory that anyone had been arrested in a Quaker Meeting House. The Quaker tradition is one entirely focused on peaceful protest.
The offence of ‘conspiracy to commit a public nuisance’ , essentially amounting to discussing a protest that might have some impact in the future if it took place was a law introduced under the last Tory Government. Its aim was to have a chilling effect on the democratic right to protest. Why a new Government headed by a well known human rights lawyer has allowed it to remain on the Statute Book is a relevant question.
The nineteenth century radical tradition often referred to the rights of the ‘Freeborn Englishman’ and E P Thompson has a chapter on it in his 1963 volume the Making of the English Working Class.
He notes: ‘this question of the limits beyond which the Englishman was not prepared to be pushed around.. and the limits beyond which authority did not dare go, is crucial..’
It might further be noted that the Freeborn Englishman was not necessarily someone always on the left of politics. This was a far deeper issue, about the right to express a political opinion without the State stepping in.
Update
There was a report in the Observer (30th March)https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/met-raids-quaker-meeting-house-and-arrests-six-women-at-youth-demand-talk?CMP=share_btn_url
The Sunday Times also led its front page with the story
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