Quote: tigertot ""My Lords, civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country. People who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history. The suffragettes are an example which comes immediately to mind. It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate protests and demonstrations of this kind. But there are conventions which are generally accepted by the law-breakers on one side and the law-enforcers on the other. The protesters behave with a sense of proportion and do not cause excessive damage or inconvenience. And they vouch the sincerity of their beliefs by accepting the penalties imposed by the law. The police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint and the magistrates impose sentences which take the conscientious motives of the protesters into account. The conditional discharges ordered by the magistrates in the cases which came before them exemplifies their sensitivity to these conventions."'"
Oh dear. I must confess to thinking it was two sets of yobs who wanted a rumble. I was all for scooping them up and allowing them to debate the arguments in a sealed off area, without the noisy distractions from outside, which might have disturbed their intellectual deliberations. The police could have opened the area up after an hour or so to allow them to announce the results of their democratic considerations. I'm sure they would have filed out, agreeing to differ, in true English fashion.
