On the 7th of April 2012, Trenton Oldfield undertook a direct-action protest at the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. The aim of his protest was to focus attention on the longstanding and entirely unjust inequalities in British society that are being severely exacerbated by government cuts. Trenton chose the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race because it is a symbol of class, privilege and elitism in Britain.
An astonishing 70% of the cabinet in the current government are Oxford or Cambridge graduates. This government is protecting the privileges of the wealthy while cutting the essential necessities of the majority and the poor and reducing peoples rights and freedoms. In the three days before Trentons protest, the coalition government (1) received royal assent for its bill to privatise the NHS, (2) introduced the Communications Data Bill to legalise surveillance of all digital communications of UK subjects, and (3) called on people to ‘shop their neighbours’ if they suspected they might protest at the 2012 Olympic Games.
Trentons protest aimed at drawing attention to these injustices. He swam into the course of the boat race. The race was halted and restarted 25 minutes later. The action was seen by an international audience but it affected just 18 rowers and a handful of event organisers on a closed river, on a long weekend. The direct-action protest was wholly consistent with Trentons decade+ work in London on addressing this citys unnecessary poverty and inequalities. The audience for the free event experienced a minor delay of 25 minutes. The BBC coverage ended at its pre-scheduled time-slot. Not a single complaint was received from the public by either the Metropolitan police or the BBC.
Trenton was initially charged with Section 5 of the ‘public order act’. Hansard reports reveal that government ministers asked the police commissioner to increase the charge so that a custodial sentence could be achieved. On the morning of his first court appearance (23 April 2022) Trentons charge was significantly increased via the ancient common law charge of ‘public nuisance’ under which conviction can result in life in prison. On the 26 September 2021 Trenton was found guilty of causing public nuisance for undertaking his protest.
The recent conviction and sentencing of Russian feminist rock collective Pussy Riot to two years in prison for their protest was rightly met with shock and anger for the lack of tolerance towards dissent under Putin. The very same lack of tolerance towards dissent seems to be happening in Britain as Trenton waits for sentencing on the 19th October 2012.
Defend the Right to Protest extend our solidarity to Trenton and wholeheartedly believe that he should not have faced criminal charges for exercising his right to protest. We are concerned about the change in the original charge seemingly due to political and media pressure. To us it is clear that this protest against inequality and elitism does not warrant a custodial sentence, least of all possibly years in prison. Defend the Right to Protest are also alarmed that this charge might be levied against protesters in the future. The only motive we can see for the CPS selecting this outdated legislation is that it offers courts the chance to hand down sentences up to life in prison.
After his original verdict Trenton made the following statement: “As inequalities increase in Britain and across much of the world, so does the criminalisation of protest; my solidarity is with everyone everywhere working towards more equitable societies.
We urge an end to this wholly inappropriate over-punishment of Trenton and the criminalisation of protest.
Adbusters
Caroline Day, Save Leyton Marshes
Dan Hind, author The Return of the Public
Danny Dorling, author Inequalities: Why Social Inequalities Persist
Dave Zirin, sports writer, activist, author Bad Sports: A Peoples History of Sports
David Burgess, activist
David Wearing, Department of Development Studies SOAS
Fanny Malinen and Steve Rushton, Bread and Circuses
Gloria Morrison, Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association
Ilan Wall, Critical Legal Thinking
John Carlos, activist and writer
John Pilger, journalist and author The Rulers of the World
Mike Wells, Games Monitor
Kris ODonnell, Occupy London
Les Levidow, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities
Mai Pal, Anti-capitalist Initiative
Marc McGowan, artist
Marc Perelman, author Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague
Mike Davis, author Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism
Nadine OConnor, Campaign director Fathers 4 Justice
Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Director Mute Publishing
Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters
Simon Hardy, Anti-capitalist Initiative
Spacehijackers
Stefan Dickers, Bishopsgate Institute
Respect to Trenton for this brave and principled peaceful protest. ….’ The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’. We need more people who care -like Trenton and other activists
Protest is certainly a right. To be effective, it must be informed by meaningful, carefully guided thought and action. While I sympathize with, and ultimately support, the end goal of Oldfield’s so-called ‘protest’ (an end to inequality), I cannot actually agree that his method should have been free of legal consequence (I would also note that I don’t believe it was the most effective method). In any event, I believe that we should recognize it for what it is: sabotage. I would stress that I am not proposing that tactics of such caliber should never be employed (they were largely successful in the Indian Independence movement). However, it is foolish to believe that such tactics should not be punished by the very laws that ‘criminalize’ such sort of behaviour, sometimes for very good reason. On the contrary, sabotage and the legal consequences of such action are what give it its substance in rejecting social norms. We live in a society that believes ‘impact’ comes through the voicing of injustice. I would suggest that it comes more effectively from the ‘demonstration’ of injustice - such as a two year prison term for protesting in a Church. Rather than pleading his innocence, perhaps Oldfield should have declared his guilt and demanded that he be given the harshest sentence. Indeed, he DID break the law, but to regain the respect of the public, it may have been more effective to embrace and exaggerate the legal consequences in order to showcase how absurd and unjust these laws can be - especially toward activists, the disempowered, the cyclically impoverished, minorities, etc. I think that this whole movement suffered greatly from a lack of uniformity, planning, and strategy, and it failed to effectively communicate the central issues at hand. I believe that the theme at the centre of this movement is incredibly important, but many of us who would have loved to support Oldfield in his crusade against inequality have been left wondering what it was that he set out to achieve…