MAYA IN THE PRESS: REBUTTING MICHAEL FOSTER MP

12 December 2005

There are various misunderstandings or misrepresentations of Maya's case floating around. Helpfully, Maya's MP, Michael Foster, has bundled some of them together in a letter today in the Independent. A rebuttal by Milan Rai is below (with brackets around the bits they didn't publish), along with the other responses he provoked (including from a Royal British Legion volunteer).

LETTER FROM MICHAEL FOSTER MP TO THE INDEPENDENT

[This letter was published in the Independent on 12 December 2005, as the lead letter.]

New law protects the right to protest

Sir: I am really sorry that my constituent Maya Evans was convicted under Section 122 of the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (report, 8 December).

On the face of it, it looked to be an overreaction on the part of the prosecutors but be that as it may, it would be wrong to say that the legislation is unnecessary. Its purpose is not to deny protest but to ensure that such protest is possible.

Historically all sorts of protests have taken place around Parliament, but with the current terrorist threat it would be easy to mask a terrorist atrocity under the guise of a legitimate demonstration. The easy solution would have been to simply ban such protest - as the media indeed claim is the purpose of the Act - but that was not the Government's intention.

Section 122 of the Act makes protests within 1km of Parliament illegal unless authorised by the police. However, the police are required to give that authorisation unless public safety or national security is compromised. Thus protests such as that of Maya Evans can be accommodated, provided the police are informed in advance. Indeed it should be noted that Miss Evans's fellow demonstrator Mr Rai did give such notice and was not prosecuted.

Ms Evans's prosecution is unfortunate and appears to have been somewhat zealous, but to suggest it is an attack on free speech is bizarre. Such a right must be, and indeed is, protected by this legislation.

Michael Foster MP

Hastings and Rye

RESPONSE FROM MILAN RAI, JNV

[This letter was sent to the Independent on 12 December 2005.]

Published 13 December 2005

Sir: As the person arrested with Maya Evans, I am really sorry that my MP Michael Foster has misled himself so seriously as to the facts of her case, and as to the new law (12 December).

I was the organiser of the ceremony at which Maya was arrested, and, as Mr Foster acknowledges, I did give notice to the police of the event. However, this notice was for the event as a whole, and on behalf of all those who might attend, including Maya. So therefore Maya had no need legally to give such notice as an individual participant, as Mr Foster knows.

Secondly, far from protecting me from prosecution as Mr Foster bizarrely suggests, by contacting the police in advance, and identifying myself as the organiser, I am now open to the much more serious charge of 'organising an unauthorised demonstration' - for which the maximum penalty is 51 weeks imprisonment.

The Crown Prosecution Service are still in the process of making up their minds on whether or not to charge me.

[If Mr Foster knows that they aren't going to carry on with the prosecution, he knows something that my arresting officer doesn't know (I spoke to him on Wednesday).]

As Mr Foster knows, the crucial issue is not whether you 'give notice' to the police - as I did - but whether you fill in a new form requesting permission to hold your demonstration. Somehow Mr Foster thinks that these forms will protect us from terrorist atrocities disguised as anti-war protests.

They don't and they can't.

Filling in the new forms is co-operation with a law that forbids the use of loudspeakers (which actually undermine the ability of stewards to keep large crowds in order), and that gives the police the power to impose conditions on your protest that can rob it of any real meaning (an all-night vigil might be turned into a twenty-minute protest). It's a law that forbids any spontaneous protests near Parliament, and in fact covers a wide area well beyond Parliament even across to the South Bank.

[These are unacceptable restrictions on our freedom of expression, and that is why I refused to submit the form that would have given our ceremony of remembrance authorisation to go ahead.]

[Michael Foster, who is legally trained, claims that all this is designed to 'protect' free speech, and to 'ensure that protest is possible' around Parliament. I'm afraid that with these claims he is merely lowering still further the regard in which MPs and lawyers are held.]

If the Crown Prosecution Service don't prosecute me - despite CCTV footage, despite police witnesses, despite a full taped 'confession' by me after my arrest - it will be because this law does not make sense. It won't be because I 'gave notice' to the police.

Unless we resist these encroachments on our freedom vigorously, the outlook is grim.

Milan Rai
Justice Not Vengeance

***

Published 13 December 2005

Sir: Never can the reputation and standing of a Member of Parliament like Michael Foster have disintegrated in so spectacular and public a fashion. He abandoned his constituent Maya Evans to her fate for a "Serious and Organised Crime" on the very day the Government legal team to which he belongs was opposing the ban on torture in the courts.

Unlike him, I lived through the Second War and to me the suggestion that reading a list of the dead at the Cenotaph should require the permission of the Commissioner is an insult to our war dead. I already walk out of the room when Tony Blair lays his wreath. It is a sad finale to my political life which began as a public schoolboy defending the efforts of the Attlee government to build a new Britain.

I thought then, and still think today, that the nine Liberals I helped elect in 1950 should have given Attlee another five years, but your correspondent J. Patterson (letters, 12 December) is wrong. No true Liberal could give Labour a second preference today.

DEREK J COLE

***

Published 14 December 2005

'Crime' of honouring our war dead

Sir: As an ex-soldier I was incensed by Michael Foster MP's argument that the arrest of Maya Evans under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act is for our protection (letter, 12 December).

Why should political protests be more of a cover for terrorist attacks on the Houses of Parliament than the tourists or commuters who were the most recent cover for terrorism?

Miss Evans' criminal act was to read the names of our war dead at the Cenotaph, our national war memorial. The Royal British Legion's exhortation is a promise to remember those who have given their lives for their country. How can someone reading out the names of our war dead ever be a criminal offence?

If remembering our dead has become a crime, then it can only be because Mr Foster and his government have a guilty conscience about their deaths.

MAJOR FRANK BALDWIN
ROYAL BRITISH LEGION VOLUNTEER LONDON NW1

***

Published 15 December 2005

Iraq war protest

Sir: What a marvellous capacity for doublethink Michael Foster MP must have, to believe that having to ask the police for permission to demonstrate is a guarantee of freedom of speech (letter, 12 December). At best it's a piece of bureaucracy, at worst (and his constituent Maya Evans' treatment tends towards the worst) it's oppressive. Perhaps another MP might like to volunteer to look after Ms Evans' interests in the House, through your columns. Mr Foster clearly isn't up to it.

CRAIG PICKERING