Felling of Colston statue was ‘violent act’ not protected by ECHR, judges rule

10 comments
  1. This doesn’t affect the existing ~~convictions~~ (edit:) _not guilty verdicts_ but clarifies the law around criminal damage during protests, which will affect any future court cases involving criminal damage during protests.

  2. Was that ever questioned, it’s pretty clear it was a violent act… I think the true issue is, does it matter.

  3. Probably the right answer.

    You can’t have a right to commit criminal damage as part of your right to protest. I agree it should have been removed sooner, but if you codify that right in law then you can’t legalise degrees of criminal damage. You also then could easily have it being used as a defence when not part of wider protests – like someone writing something obscene on a gay couple’s wall.

    The way to deal with it is probably for CPS to consider its not on the public interest, and then juries to return the (technically incorrect) verdict that they did regarding thr statue.

  4. If it wasn’t illegal it would kind of take away the point of felling it really. Unless we want statues to be some sort of social stress ball

  5. Slavery was a series of millions of violent acts so I still don’t see a problem with dumping the statue in a harbour. It’s a publicly owned monument, the public decided it looked better underwater.

  6. If you feel that strongly about the statue, accept the consequences of removal. It’s still a win if it’s gone.

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