Unlawful detention by police

R (Laporte) v Chief Constable of Gloucestershire Constabulary QB Div Ct TLR 26 February

This was an application for judicial review of a decision by the defendant to prevent three coaches travelling from London to RAF Fairford to join a demonstration against the Iraq war and then forcibly to return the coaches to London under police escort. Although it was not a breach of the demonstrators’ rights under the European Convention on Human Rights to be prevented from attending a demonstration where the police feared breaches of the peace, the forcible return to London of the coaches carrying the protestors was unlawful. There was no immediately apprehended breach of the peace by the claimant sufficient to justify even her transistory detention; detention on the coach for two-and-a-half hours went far beyond anything that could conceivably constitute transistory detention and, even if there had been, the circumstances and length of detention on the coach were wholly disproportionate to the apprehended breach of the peace. Accordingly the application for judicial review was allowed.