Peace protester wins flag conviction fight
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A peace campaigner has used her right to freedom of expression to overturn a conviction for defacing an American flag while protesting at a US Air Force base.
Lindis Percy, a health visitor and midwife aged 59, won an order yesterday quashing her conviction at Thetford magistrates' court in Norfolk, over an incident at RAF Feltwell in December last year.
Lord Justice Kennedy and Mrs Justice Hallett ruled that the conviction was "incompatible" with her right to free expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Her lawyers had argued that American servicemen had no right to have their flag legally protected from disrespectful treatment.
In May, Ms Percy was fined £200 for disorderly behaviour after Thetford magistrates were told she had defaced the flag by putting a stripe across the stars and writing "Stop Star Wars" across the stripes. She had used the flag in a protest against British and American defence policy, placing it on the ground in front of a vehicle and standing on it.
Five American service personnel at the RAF Feltwell gate gave evidence that they were offended by Ms Percy's behaviour, regarding her acts as "a desecration of their national flag to which they attach considerable importance".
But Keir Starmer, appearing for Ms Percy, had argued that "flag denigration" was a "form of protest activity renowned the world over and has been afforded protection in other jurisdictions, for example in the USA itself". Ms Percy had the right to freedom of expression until it could be established that it was "necessary and proportionate" to restrict it, he said.
Mrs Justice Hallet said the magistrates' court that had convicted her had accepted Ms Percy was motivated by deeply held beliefs that the "Star Wars" project was misguided, posed a danger to international stability and was not in the best interests of Britain. The case turned on the impact of Article 10 of the human rights convention, which protected freedom of expression.
Quashing Ms Percy's conviction, Mrs Justice Hallett said the district judge "appears to have placed too much reliance on just one factor – namely that the appellant's insulting behaviour could have been avoided ... This seems to me to give insufficient weight to the presumption in the appellant's favour of the right to freedom of expression."