Symon Hill was charged with an offence for shouting ‘Who elected him?’ at a coronation event. Now he’s been awarded £2,500 by the police force who detained him
It was a sliding doors moment. Symon Hill was never meant to be in Oxford on Sunday 11 September, 2022. After going to his regular morning church service, he planned to walk to the station and take a train to Birmingham to visit a friend. But she was feeling unwell, so instead, he left his Baptist church and turned in the opposite direction to walk home, via the city centre.
It was a warm day and the streets were busy with shoppers and pub-goers, says 47-year-old Symon who now lives in Coventry. There were also roadblocks and closures in place in preparation for a proclamation ceremony for the new King Charles III at Carfax Tower, which made getting home a little trickier to navigate.
He ended up stuck at the back of a crowd – of, he estimates, a few hundred people – as the event started.
“I want to emphasise, this wasn’t a crowd of diehard royalists,” he says. “Some had stopped to hear, others were trying to get past, it was just a normal weekend in the city”.
It began with mourning for the late Queen Elizabeth II, and then the gathered dignitaries declared Charles our “only King” and “rightful liege lord”. Symon says he found it “hard to stomach”. So he shouted: “Who elected him?”
A couple of people told him to shut up but says most barely heard him – a reporter at the front described it as “an indistinct heckle”.
He was about to head home, when he found himself surrounded “nose to nose” by three security guards, who he says told him “not to express his opinion”. He was pushed backwards. Police officers then arrested Symon and put him in a van.
This week – two-and-a-half years after the event – Symon has been awarded £2,500 in compensation from Thames Valley Police, which accepted that the arrest – on the grounds of using threatening or abusive words or disorderly behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress – was unlawful. The CPS had dropped the case in January 2023.
Symon, who works in adult education and is training to be a Baptist minister, says even on the day it was clear that the police were confused. “I tried to get a clear answer about what law I’d been arrested under and the police kept contradicting each other,” he says – at one point he was told he had been detained under the 1986 Police Public Order Act. “They were on the radios talking about what to do and it seemed to me they were uncertain”.
As he was led down the street in handcuffs, two strangers tried to intervene. “They were saying ‘I don’t agree with him, but isn’t this a free country?’. I was so grateful to those two people”. In police-worn body camera footage shared during the legal challenge, officers can reportedly be heard saying: “We do need to fine or de-arrest as we will get a complaint off the back of this.”
He was driven home by police to the housing co-op where he lived – “I was quite shaken” – and told he would be de-arrested but might later have to come for a voluntary interview.
However, the police went ahead with charging Symon. “It was later made pretty clear it wasn’t a ‘voluntary’ interview and I could be arrested if I didn’t go,” he says. “One of the security guards alleged I assaulted him – that was the scariest moment because assault is a serious thing. But I hadn’t assaulted anyone, I hadn’t threatened anyone, I hadn’t even used swear words.”
Although he has long had anti-monarchy views – “the idea that one person should bow down to another just because of an accident of birth, I find morally repugnant” – Symon never dreamt he would be arrested for his behaviour that day. “I was completely gobsmacked,” he says.
King Charles III at his coronation in Westminster Abbey, 6 May 2023 (Photo: Richard Pohle/WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Inequality is the central pillar of his objection to the Royals. “I teach history and I’m very aware that whatever Charles’ qualities as an individual [head of state], he is King because his ancestors fought off other claimants to the throne and I think that sets the tone for a screwed up way of approaching life and politics.
“Am I supposed to tell my goddaughter that those royal children are more important than she is? It is about treating each other as equals.”
Following his compensation this week, he says he has “mixed emotions”. “I’m relieved it is over because I felt it was going on forever, and I was pleased to have the acknowledgement that it was unlawful”.
Symon was represented by lawyers from the civil liberties organisation, Liberty. “I am very aware that lots of people who are unlawfully arrested don’t get the chance or this publicity,” he says. “I owe it to other people who’ve been subject to police mistreatment to not just make it about me.”
He has had a lot of supportive messages, along with some abuse, and accusations of bringing the church into disrepute – “there were lots of arguments in The Church Times letter pages”.
The main message he wants people to take away is that “this could happen to you too”. “Whatever your views, whatever your lifestyle, this could happen to you. If we don’t change the laws relating to protest, if we don’t hold the police to account, then anybody reading or hearing about this case, is at risk of experiencing what I did too”.