A Salford resident will not face retrial for shouting “Tory Scum” at former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, after the Crown Prosecution Service lost a High Court bid to quash their acquittal.
Radical Haslam, from Salford, was previously acquitted along with Ruth Wood, from Cambridge, of allegations of using threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
At a trial last year, Sir Iain said he was subjected to a “cacophony of sound” as he walked from the Midland Hotel to the Mercure Hotel, during the Conservative Party conference in Manchester city centre on October 4, 2021.
Sir Iain, the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, told Manchester Magistrates’ Court he felt the term “Tory scum” was an “appallingly abusive piece of language”.
Chief magistrate Judge Paul Goldspring acquitted the protesters. He said using that phrase in the context of them targeting Sir Iain as they followed him was “both insulting and pejorative, and I don’t accept that that wasn’t their intention
“In the context of Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act, the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association, he accepted that this behaviour was “reasonable”.
The CPS brought a legal challenge against the decision at the High Court, arguing at a hearing in October that Judge Goldspring’s decision was “unreasonable” and the protesters should face a retrial.
Lord Justice Popplewell and Mr Justice Fordham dismissed the CPS’s bid in a ruling on Tuesday.
Mr Justice Fordham gave the decision, and said there was “no misdirection in law”.
He added: “The judge’s approach, reasoning and conclusion on the proportionality question involved no error.
“The judge had very well in mind the context and circumstances.”
Mr Justice Fordham continued: “Importantly, there was no finding of using ‘threatening words’ or of ‘threatening behaviour’, nor indeed of using abusive words or of abusive behaviour, nor of using insulting behaviour.”
Featured image taken/owned by Richard Townshend, Wikimedia Creative Commons.
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