Thanks for all of your support in relation to the ridiculous covid fine I received for doing my work as a barrister who represents environmental activists; it’s very heartening. I’m confident all will be ok in the end & I will successfully challenge the fine in court. However...
I mainly wanted to publicise it to draw attention to the blatant abuse of the covid regs by some police officers to crackdown on protest and target marginalised groups. I am aware of my privileges & we must ask the question: if the police are willing to do this to a middle class,
white barrister *on film*, what are they doing to those with less privilege, whether activists and protesters, young people, people of colour, different classes or those less able to stand up for their rights?
Whilst few of us would deny the importance of covid regs, having been granted such wide powers, the police need to ensure they are not using them in an abusive or biased manner. At the moment there is clear evidence that they are doing so & we all have a duty to resist this.
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Outrageously, I have just been fined £200 under the covid regs for daring to do my job as a barrister and to assist activists in the tunnel at the Euston anti-HS2 protest to halt actions by the the National Eviction Team that threatens their safety.
I have been working pro bono with a group of other barristers and solicitors for a number of days to try and find legal routes to challenge the dangerous practises that the eviction teams have been using to evict the tunnel.
It has been difficult getting an accurate picture of what is going on in relation to the tunnel, given that the people who are affected are underground and they cannot know what is happening at the surface.
Pretty disgraceful misuse of the coronavirus regs by the police at the anti-HS2 protest at Euston. Despite me telling an officer that I was a barrister there to investigate a potential instruction from a client, I was repeatedly threatened with a fine.
I was also told that unless I give my name and address, a card to “prove” I am a barrister and to disclose privileged communications from a potential client, I would be fined. In the end I was forced to show my profile on my chambers website and he let me go.
Whilst it is obviously chilling to threaten lawyers in this way, it fits with the Met Police’s use of the regs at this protest: to hassle and remove peaceful protesters whilst completely ignoring potential breaches of the regs by HS2’s bailiffs.