As an interested non legally qualified person I suppose the legislation under which we are all governed and have requirement to obey is only as efficient as those who draft it and those who indicate their approval by voting for it as it passes its various stages in parliament. And so we have the Public Order Act the terms of which have caused a difference of opinion between the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Prime Minister. In the light of current events it is helpful to know the sections in question: [my bold]
(1)Where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them (taken together) is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety, each of the persons using unlawful violence for the common purpose is guilty of riot.
(2)It is immaterial whether or not the 12 or more use or threaten unlawful violence simultaneously.
(3)The common purpose may be inferred from conduct.
(4)No person of reasonable firmness need actually be, or be likely to be, present at the scene.
(5)Riot may be committed in private as well as in public places.
(6)A person guilty of riot is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or a fine or both.
(1)A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—
(a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b)having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.
(2)An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.
(3)F65. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(4)In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for the accused to prove that he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the written material displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling.
(5)A person who is not shown to have intended to stir up racial hatred is not guilty of an offence under this section if he did not intend his words or behaviour, or the written material, to be, and was not aware that it might be, threatening, abusive or insulting.
(6)This section does not apply to words or behaviour used, or written material displayed, solely for the purpose of being included in a programme [F66included in a programme service].
It is s.18 which has been widely quoted by some media commentators more qualified than I. It appears that much of the argument centres around the meaning of the Arabic term "JIHAD". Below I`ve copied the 3rd paragraph on the first page of this most informative essay.
"Since the late 20th century, the word jihad has gained remarkable currency: used by resistance, liberation, and terrorist movements alike to legitimate their cause and motivate their followers. The Afghan Mujahiddin, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, have waged a jihad in Afghanistan against foreign powers and among themselves; Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, Daghestan and the southern Philippines, Bosnia and Kosovo have fashioned their struggles as jihads; Hizbollah, HAMAS, and Islamic Jihad Palestine have characterized war with Israel as a jihad; Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group has engaged in a jihad of terror against the government there and Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda have waged a global jihad against Muslim governments and the West."
Other learned experts have offered definitions similar to the author of the above. The argument of the Commissioner seems to revolve around the various definitions. There can be little doubt that these disagreements of the semantics are a get out of jail free card by the Commissioner to avoid taking action against those who knew exactly what they meant and whose audience amidst their cheering knew that also.
The other argument used although I have not seen the exact clause or section stated explicitly is that for presumably s.1 to be used the subjected individual must be "present at the scene." In other words the offence cannot be committed in a vacuum. This begs the question. There is an old adage; can a rose be red at night? The basis of this is that the rose has colour only when light is reflected from it, such light entering a human eye which has the ability to determine the wavelength interpreted by the brain as "colour". Is the intrinsic value of the rose red or is it a subjective appreciation the reality of which requires that above mentioned eye to validate it? Imagine two observers of the rose one of whom suffers from a colour blindness where red and green are indistinguishable. In daylight to that person the idea of "red" is incomprehensible. However when both observers view the rose at night they experience the same subjective result; the rose is lacking colour to both. They will see a similar shade of grey. The rose of course is unchanged: its molecular structure is unchanged, its shape is unchanged ; it is the same rose as it was before sunset. And so with s.1. Let the legal eagles of government and the Commissioner accept the worldly view of the Muslims involved and present, and non Muslims {Jews} who were not, that the definition of Jihad is as above then the requirements to charge have been met. But no action was taken and reasons for that are disingenuous in the extreme. The plain truth is that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, some Chief Constables and the Crown Prosecution Service were fearful of causing upset or worse in a crowd of 100,000 people, a sizeable proportion of which they considered might have become violent. That is a perfectly reasonable position for police to have taken and for observers to have understood. The trouble is, as in so many cases, police action [remember the vigil in memory of Sarah Everard kidnapped, raped and killed by a firearms licensed police officer when Met Police brutally broke up a peaceful gathering mainly of women] or inaction is condemned only many months later when uniformed weasels make non apology apologies. This weekend`s inaction is one of those occasions. It follows the evening of 2/12/21 when Jewish teenagers were wrongly accused of provocative words and/or acts which provoked assault by Muslims. The crime was never solved although how deeply the Met investigated is a moot point. Another deeply disturbing inaction was in May 2021 when a convey of cars containing Palestinian supporters with flags being waved out of the windows drove along Finchley Road in north London; a busy main road in an area with a high Jewish population. Nobody has appeared in court for these activities. When consideration is given to these and other incidents involving Jews and Muslims the reticence of police action is there for all to see.
We are unfortunate in experiencing a government in disarray seeking desperately which avenues it might choose to alleviate a probable humbling next year at the ballot box. If it decides that facing up to the political advancement of Islamist Hamas supporting politicking is a vote winner then that might be a single decision which benefits all of us who have taken for granted that our western Judeo Christian civilisation can continue even when social and medieval ideas and practices from the backwoods of Pakistan are gaining traction amongst many.
FYI below is the statement [relevant section] that the Met Police put out to explain their non action.
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