MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
difficulties and limits of trying to fashion civil injunctions into quasi-public order restrictions. [101] When considering whether it is necessary to impose civil injunctions (even if they can be precisely defined and properly limited to prohibit only unlawful conduct) the Court must be entitled to look at the overall picture and the extent to which the law provides other remedies that may be equally if not more effective. [102]The police play an essential and important role in striking the appropriate balance between facilitating lawful demonstration and preventing activities that are unlawful. Consistent with the proper respect for the Article 10/11 rights (see [99(viii)] above), it is only those engaged upon or intent on violence (or other criminal activity) who are liable to arrest and removal, leaving others to demonstrate peacefully. The police have available an extensive array of resources and powers to keep protests within lawful bounds, including: i) their presence; often itself a deterrent to unlawful activities; ii) the power of arrest, in particular for breach of the peace, harassment, public order offences (under Public Order Act 1986), obstruction of the highway (see [107] below), criminal damage, aggravated trespass (contrary to s.68 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) and assault; iii) the use of dispersal powers under Part 3 of the Anti-social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014; iv) the imposition of conditions on public assembly under s.14 Public Order Act 1986; and/or v) an application for a prohibition of trespassory assembly under s.14A Public Order Act 1986. [103]Selected and proportionate use of these powers, adjudged to be necessary and targeted at particular individuals, by police officers making decisions based on an assessment ‘on-the-ground’, is immeasurably more likely to strike the proper balance between the demonstrators' rights of freedom of expression/assembly and the legitimate rights of others, than a Court attempting to frame a civil injunction prospectively against unknown “protestors”. [104] Parliament has also provided local authorities powers to make public space protection orders which can restrict the right to demonstrate. Chapter 2 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 empowers local authorities to make such orders if the conditions in s.59 are met: see Dulgheriu -v- London Borough of Ealing [2020] 1 WLR 609 .
350. The Court of Appeal in Canada Goose [2020] 1 WLR 2802 [93] agreed:
“… Canada Goose’s problem is that it seeks to invoke the civil jurisdiction of the courts as a means of permanently controlling ongoing public demonstrations by a
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