The police officer filmed pushing Ian Tomlinson to the ground will not face criminal charges, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, announced this morning that the officer — called PC ‘A’ — shown here pushing the 47-year-old former newspaper vendor to the ground at the 2009 G20 demonstrations in London, has no case to answer.

PC ‘A’ can be seen hitting Tomlinson with a baton and pushing him over at the South end of the Royal Exchange Buildings in the City of London. Demonstrators helped Tomlinson up and he is later seen staggering down the road. He later collapsed outside 77 Cornhill and died from internal bleeding. Evidence compiled using photographs and video readily available on the internet and via news organisations showed that not only were police not attacked by protestors as they sought to give Tomlinson first aid (as had been claimed), but that their phalanx-like lines of officers may have prevented an ambulance from reaching Tomlinson sooner.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission was late in launching an inquiry into the death, claiming there was nothing suspicious about it. Only the release of footage of the incident by the Guardian and Channel 4 News a week later changed their minds. The IPCC submitted its findings four months after Tomlinson’s death. Its initial post mortem stated that he died of a heart attack. A second investigation by the IPCC concluded that he died of internal bleeding.

It took 15 months for the CPS to come to a decision about whether to charge the officer, a member of the Territorial Support Group, with manslaughter. The deadline to charge him with common assault has long passed.

In a statement released this morning, the CPS says it will “not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Tomlinson’s death was caused by PC ‘A’ pushing him to the ground. That being the case, there is no realistic prospect of a conviction for unlawful act manslaughter. It also follows that there is also no realistic prospect of a conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm or misconduct in public office.”

The Guardian’s Paul Lewis, who won praise for his coverage of the incident, said: “Knowing the Ian Tomlinson case inside-out, I am shocked. Manslaughter was a tough call, but no charge at all? Not misconduct?”

The Tomlinson family who were in attendance at today’s decision along with PC ‘A’, claim the investigation was a cover-up. With Keir Starmer calling the events leading to Tomlinson’s death an “alleged assault” [despite clear evidence that Tomlinson was not only hit but pushed hard in the back], no one is surprised that PC ‘A’ was let off. But to not face any form of disciplinary action?

There’s a chant on the streets when demonstrators have a grudge against the police. It goes “no justice, no peace, fuck the police”. Today it is “no justice, no peace, we are the police.”

Download a timeline of the events on the day of Ian Tomlinson’s death.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 22 July 2010.

They recently had Sir Tom Stoppard and the Belarus Free Theatre on at the Free Word Centre.

Nick Cohen wrote a smashing review in the Guardian about how to make a drama out of a crisis.

Belarus is possibly Europe’s last dictatorship where freedom of speech and expression are, to state the bleeding obvious, non-existent. We can whinge about media bias and BBC censorship or other indulgent bullshit that may or may not affect our mortgage prices. But if I make sweeping criticisms of government or take a detailed bash at our police, I do not have to wait for the knock on my door. Nor do I have to watch my mobile phone conversations, vary my journey to work or learn how to lose people who are tailing me. All because I want to tell a story that needs to be told.

There’s a lot UK activists can learn from people like BFT’s Natalia Koliada – the main one being to stop ratcheting up your suffering under the unjust hands of the state. When you don’t know where your friend’s body has been buried because he popped round yours for a chat about life, the universe and everything, then come back to me. The next time you feel compelled to whine about having your ‘cover blown’ as you were trying to D-lock yourself to a bank, have a little whine. Then shut up, stop focusing on your suffering and look at the wider picture. The states and systems that need addressing, the truth that needs to be spoken to power.

Right. End of self-righteous bitch. Here are the videos.

The interns filmed them. I corrected exposure, cut them down yadda yadda.

Home Secretary Theresa May is to halt searches of individuals without reasonable suspicion after the European Court of Human Rights rules the power unlawful.

In a speech to the House of Commons, May cited a European Court of Human Rights judgment that stop and search powers granted under Section 44 were illegal and equal a violation of the right to a private life. The court stated that powers were “drawn too broadly — at the time of their initial authorisation and when they are used. It also found that the powers contain insufficient safeguards to protect civil liberties.”

May went on to say that the government cannot appeal the ECHR’s judgment — nor would they have done had they been able to.

Shadow Home Secretary Alan Johnson criticised the government’s decision, stating that the decision in Strasbourg was based on how stop and search was used “some years ago” and that the use of Section 44 had “dropped considerably over the last two years”.

May says that after seeking urgent legal advice and consulted police forces she would be “introducing a new suspicion threshold”. Instead of “requiring a search to be ‘expedient’ for the prevention of terrorism” a search would have to be “necessary for that purpose”.

Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using Section 44 powers. Instead, they will have to rely on Section 43 powers – which require officers to reasonably suspect the person to be a terrorist.

Officers will only be able to use Section 44 in relation to the searches of vehicles and they will have to have “reasonable suspicion” to do so.

The case that brought Section 44 to this end was brought to the European court by journalist Pennie Quinton and student Kevin Gillan. They were stopped outside demonstrations at Defence Systems and Equipment International, the world’s largest arms fair held at the Excel Centre in East London.

The High Court and the Court of Appeal rejected Quinton and Gillan’s assertion that tactics under Section 44 were illegal, citing the threat of terrorism in London.

However, the ECHR declared it an unlawful violation of an individual’s right to privacy. Because the UK has signed up to the European court, decisions made by it are binding.

Pennie Quilton told Index on Censorship: “It’s the least Theresa May can do. Section 44 is a law that has been challenged and has been ruled out of order. This government has to make amendments to the law to stay in line with the ruling in Strasbourg. Something had to be done because the police said they weren’t going to change the way they operated despite the judgment.”

The Metropolitan police said that despite a ruling in January by the European court that deemed Section 44 unlawful, they would continue using it as its decision was being appealed.

Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship commented: “Stop and search under section 44 was widely used against individuals exercising their legitimate right to protest. It has been one of the most notorious and frequent abuses of free speech over the past decade. The Strasbourg ruling is an important landmark and I’m delighted that the government is scrapping the use of these powers.”

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship, 08 July 2010.

Learning Mandarin Chinese is easier than working out the finer threads of the News Corp/Shine Group/BSkyB/News International tapestry. The basics are that they are linked via a network of relatives and close friends last seen in the days of the Hapsburgs. To avoid treading on the world’s anti-monopoly laws, they’ve carefully divided control of each unit.

We’re all too aware of the monopoly of one Sergio Berlusconi. Murdoch the Elder is not doing a large-scale version of Italian media. Under Berlusconi, everything from newspapers, magazines and television is dictated by one man whose sole purpose is to hang on to power and escape prosecution for dodgy dealings. Murdoch is a businessman addicted to acquisition – he has a typical collectors mentality of wanting to have everything with little regard for the consequence. Being able to pull the puppet strings of business and government is one of the benefits of his unique position…but it is not his drive.

Life under Murdoch, at least my erstwhile parish Sky News, is not the plot to Tomorrow Never Dies. Rupert does not have a secret phone to editorial footsoldiers on newsdesks. When I was on the foreign desk, producers invoked the muscle of John Ryley, Head of News, when they were trying to swing the editorial eye. “John’s very keen” is a line often heard. Clever editors rebut with “let’s give him a call”.

Critics of Murdoch bias will invariably bring up the Adam Boulton and Kay Burley affairs during the last General Election. Casting personal opinion of these strong-willed stakeholders aside, let us look at the facts.

In Adam’s case, as Political Editor he was the pivot point for Sky’s election coverage. He is also a workaholic who hadn’t slept for days. When pitted against the stable and calm winds of Alaistair Campbell, Adam buckled. A moment of abandon – to be seen by all on YouTube.

In Kay’s position, a gaggle of demonstrators took advantage of Sky News having an open broadcasting stage as opposed to the BBC’s enclosed one. It’s like offering a crowd a large screen and a live Twitter feed. Someone is going to abuse it for a laugh.

Gaza, the Israeli raids on it and Sky News’ refusal to run the subsequent DEC Appeal is the only time I truly felt a corporate hand muzzling the mouth. And that on the day both the BBC and Sky said they would not be running the appeal, Sky News correspondent Emma Hurd opened a news item with a wide shot of the Gaza Strip and the line “this is the scene of a war crime”.

Should a takeover occur, broadcasting standards aren’t what journos at Osterley will be worried about. They’ll wonder if they’ll still have their jobs. As the axes fall, hacks will keep their heads down, produce the breaking news they’re so good at and pray they’re not next for the chop. Emails will be sent about how to cover stories on the cheap, deals and alliances with sister broadcasters will be forged to pool manpower. Quality of content won’t matter as much as appearing to tick the right boxes. Fear is a good way of keeping the rats in the hold.

Arguments against a Murdoch monopoly are usually based on events in print. Sky News knows it can’t get away with blanket bias on air. They can’t declare an allegiance to a political party like their ink-stained counterparts. Actions are watched closely by Ofcom and if one side of an issue appears to be getting too much air time, balance is restored one way or another.

Because television is not “self-regulating”, quality and content are dictated by public interest – or an editor’s perception of it. It’s hard to break truly original journalism in broadcast because editors closely monitor their competitors to see what they’re running – and run that. The process becomes a mobius strip of information dependent on precedence of events.

What I am worried about is what will happen elsewhere. Business-wise, a monopoly like that planned should a takeover occur is frightening…it will send shockwaves into other industries – healthcare, property, construction, natural resources. That’s what we should really be concerned about.

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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 17 June 2010, and in a different version on The Comment Factory.

One of the most flagrant of these illegal uses was in London in April 2004, involving 840 people.

Fourteen police forces in the UK including the Metropolitan Police, City Police and Thames Valley misused powers on 40 separate occasions between 2001 and 2008. The Home Office said a number of “administrative errors” led to police chiefs not getting the proper authorisation to carry out searches. The Act allows officers to stop and search people without having any “reasonable suspicion” they are about to or intend to commit an act of terrorism.

The errors involve paperwork. Someone didn’t sign something or fill in the right bit. The errors came to light after the Metropolitan Police had to dig around its archive thanks to a Freedom of Information request.

If you define terrorism as the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve a goal, then you can make that definition fit police actions whenever they invoke Section 44. The European Court of Human Rights ruled the blanket use of Section 44 across London was unlawful. The law is too loose and open to abuse.

Home Office admission to the illegality of stops and searches under Section 44 does not mean a government admission to the illegality and inhumanity of that very act. Messing up on an administrative level only means that police forces around the country will tighten up their bookkeeping. It does not mean they will cease stopping and searching members of the public they arbitrarily deem a threat to the status quo.

It doesn’t take guts to question what a police officer is doing to you once he invokes Section 44. It takes knowledge.

So what can you do?

• You do not have to give your name and address or explain why you are where you are. You can’t run off, but you can go limp and stay silent.

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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 10 June 2010 and subsequently republished on The Comment Factory.

Section 44 has long drawn criticism from protestors who argue the police have used the power to infringe their right to peaceful protest.

Policing and Security Minister David Hanson MP argued that the powers under Section 44 are “an important tool in a package of measures in the on-going fight against terrorism.” He said that he was “disappointed” with the ruling and “will seek to appeal”.

The case brought to the ECHR was that of Kevin Gillan and journalist Pennie Quinton who were stopped and searched en route to demonstrations against the world’s largest arms fair, Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEi), in 2003.

As she was stopped, Pennie volunteered her press cards with the hope of being waved on by the police. Instead Metropolitan Police searched her and Gillan under Section 44 and were ordered to stop filming.

Press freedom isn’t always a high priority for those policing protests. Press cards, as any journalist can tell you, are no guarantee of special treatment by the Metropolitan Police. Those that read “NUJ” are taken less seriously by our uniformed friends because “anyone can get those”. Despite carrying press cards emblazoned with the logo of a corporate television station I worked for, I’ve not only been stopped and searched under Section 44 but also arrested. And charged. And am now due to stand trial this February. For impersonating a police officer.

On other occasions, I’ve received hassle and faced physical injury at the hands of the Metropolitan Police. And that’s while I’ve been armed with that typical terrorist ruse of a television news crew consisting of me, a reporter, a cameraman and a rather conspicuous satellite truck.

Whilst manning newsdesks, an occasional complaint from journalists on the ground would involve members of the Metropolitan Police getting heavy-handed with cameramen and their kit. Nothing much comes from these incidents…phone calls from bosses to bosses ends up in apology and an unsaid agreement that they’d do the same dance when another such incident comes up in future. The link between newsrooms and the police is too great (one relies on the other for tip-offs on events, the other thinks they’re winning the PR war by doing so).

The Metropolitan Police are yet to issue any new instruction to their officers with respect to today’s ruling. I wonder how many stops and searches have happened since the Court’s decision. Because the Home Office have three months within which to appeal, I doubt the general public will see much change in how the police operate.

Section 44 allows senior officers to designate entire areas of their patch as stop and search zones based on their likelihood of being a terrorism target. Every train station in the UK is covered by a Section 44 order and there are over 100 stop and search zones in London. Because the Home Office is afraid such information might give terrorists ideas, most exact locations of stop and search zones are kept secret. So nobody really knows whether you are in an area covered by Section 44 and whether they are likely to be stopped and searched going about your daily business.

Even more invidious has been the way police forces across the UK have used Section 44 to target protestors.

What I want to ask is, by saying they will seek to appeal the ECHR’s decision, what do the Home Office think they know and who do they seek to control? And to what end? It’s as if, as people living in the UK, it’s assumed we are guilty and have to prove ourselves innocent.

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship, 12 January 2010.