Please read all of it, as it is not hard to see through their smokescreen once you have been forewarned. It is desperation on their part, and highly dubious behaviour, so it is even more important that people stand up for their basic human right to protest. At the bottom we also include some notes about not breaching the injunction itself, and the dates they were issued on.

The Tactics
Several police officers, notably among them Mike Nasser and DC Davidson of Lancashire police, have been asking people to attend police stations, to be informed that they have harassed Asahi Glass and other companies, or broken the injunctions. They are using this to get information and cautions out of people, and to try and intimidate protestors from continuing legitimate actions against these animal abusers.

What makes this an abuse of process is that they are using emails, letters and phone calls sent before the injunctions were in place to justify their claims. They are also to some degree stretching and interpreting the Harassment Act to fit their needs, leading them to make some very dubious claims in its name. Note, they use both the injunctions and the Harassment Act in their arguments, and often, wrongly, confuse the two.

Seeing through the smoke
Firstly, for the vast majority of people these communications (sent BEFORE the injunctions were in place) were polite and legitimate. They would not amount to harassment with or without the injunction.

Only if you have repeatedly communicated with an individual over a number of occasions with the intention of causing fear or intimidation, or in an aggressive manner would it amount to harassment. They are going to be hard pressed to say that a few polite emails or letters fall into this category.

Secondly, as long as they were sent before the injunction was granted they do not amount to a breach of the injunction itself. And if they were sent after the injunction was granted, the police would still have to show that the individual concerned actually knew about the injunction and what it contained first. Nasser and Davidson are very good at considering breaking the injunction and causing harassment as being the same thing, when in fact they are two different offences.

This is the most important point. The injunction does cover types of peaceful protest that would not normally be against the law, but unless someone has been served with it directly or indirectly then they cannot be said to be in breach of it. This means that someone who has not been served is not breaking the law by making a phone call or sending an email to make polite complaints, contrary to what F2 Chemicals, or other companies may tell you when you contact them.

In the case of the Japanese customers the injunction does still permit polite calls to the switchboard, not withstanding what they or the police may tell you otherwise.

Where they know they cannot use the injunction, they are attempting to use the Harassment Act directly. They are on even more dubious territory here. See our legal guide for more information on the Harassment Act, but they have to show that by sending the communications you intended to actually harass the employees directly, which a polite email asking them to stop dealing with HLS is hardly going to amount to!

Tips to protect yourself
So, if a pair of Lancashire’s finest pork pie eaters makes demands of you, here are some tips to keep you safe:

1) FIRST, EMAIL US BEFORE YOU SAY ANYTHING TO THEM OR AGREE TO MEET THEM - WE WILL REPLY TO YOU STRAIGHT AWAY

2) CALL A FRIENDLY SOLICITOR FOR ADVICE; for more details see the last page of the legal guide for activists at www.freebeagles.org, or email  info@freebeagles.org for a copy.

3) Unless they are summoning you to answer police bail or actually arresting you, you do not have to go to the police station.

4) If you do go to the police station, make sure you have a friendly solicitor with you, not a duty one who is ignorant of these particular issues.

5) You do NOT have to give a statement. In most cases it is best that you don’t.

6) Do not believe their lies and do not be bullied into accepting cautions or making statements. If the communications the police discuss were sent before the injunction was granted, then you have not breached it. Sending polite emails to staff about their company’s involvement with HLS does not amount to harassment, no matter how much they threaten you with arrest.

It is possible that if you have written more than one email to the same person, you may be arrested and charged with harassment even for writing polite emails. This is because the police are saying that writing more than one email amounts to harassment. However, they know this is not true and it is simply a part of their campaign of intimidation. So long as the emails were polite and not threatening, the charges will be dropped and you will then be able to sue for false imprisonment. The important thing is not to let them frighten you. See our guide on what to do at the police station at www.freebeagles.org for more advice on dealing with them.

7) If they over step the mark, sue or put a complaint in. These men need to realise that they are not going to be able to bully the animal rights movement in such as crass way, or intimidate us from our basic human right to protest.

Remember, these coppers are acting purely on behalf of the companies in a desperate effort to show that they are making headway against protests directed against the animal abusers. The law is secondary to them, and they are bending the truth on behalf of these HLS customers. What matters is that the campaign is successful, and that they are trying to suppress action precisely because of this.

Just say NO.

A photo of one of these ‘coppers’ can be found at  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284634.html

Please pass this article on to any other animal rights contacts you may have. It is important that people are not caught out by these police tricks. For more information on your rights, please visit  http://www.freebeagles.org/ or email  info@freebeagles.org

Notes on the Breaching the Injunctions
You are not breaching of the injunction unless you have been served with it, or it can be shown you have knowledge of its restrictions. But, if bailiffs have attempted to serve people on a demo, then the police will treat them as having been served and arrest them accordingly if they breach it. Those arrested will then have to argue in court that they had a "reasonable excuse" to breach the injunction - e.g. that they had not read it or did not understand it. This has worked well as a defence where civil injunctions (Section 3 of the Harassment Act) such as these were used against fur protestors. It's also worth noting that Section 3 is an either way offence – that is you are entitled to a jury trial, which is another reason why the cops are not be keen to pursue trivial breaches.

It is important in these situations for the police / prosecution to show that you have been served with the injunction. Service can take the form of being directly served with the injunction by a bailiff at home or on a demonstration. Or you could also be deemed to have been indirectly served if evidences presented that you looked at it on the internet, something the police are starting to place emphasis on - whether it is by looking at the SHAC website or downloading the injunction directly. The former is not necessarily proof, but the latter would in all probability be accepted as having knowledge of the injunction.

However, there is no law against keeping regularly keeping your computer clean and wiping any trace of the SHAC website and injunction from your computer. Use software tools such as Evidence Eliminator, Clean Disk Security, PGP and MacWasher to keep yourself protected in this fashion. In particular you need to keep your browser cache and history files clean. If in doubt, please, please feel free to get in contact with us and we can offer you further advice. Email us at  info@freebeagles.org. Similarly, there is no reason why you have to keep a copy of the injunction in your house even if you’ve been served with it.

Finally, being served with one injunction does not mean you have been served with them all. Just because you have been photographed being served with the HLS injunction, does not mean you have been served with the Asahi Glass injunction or with any of the others.

The campaigning is obviously being effective, and that is all the more reason not to be intimidated and caused to stop. So if you have not broken the law, or the injunction, then there is no reason why you should stop. The police are resorting to trickery to protect these companies out of desperation and not a desire to uphold the law; but if you come prepared then there is little they can actually do.

Injunction Dates
The HLS injunction was initially ordered last April and finalised on 20th June 2003.

The Japanese ones were initially ordered on 13th October and finalised on 10th November, 2003. The companies involved where Asahi Glass (including F2 Chemicals), Daiichi, Eisai, Sankyo and Yamanouchi; but note that all were done individually and not as a group.

Emerson was January 2004.

The Chiron injunction was first ordered at the start of February 2004 and finalised on 3rd March. The Phytopharm one was also finalised on the 3rd March 2004.

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This article is for information purposes only; its aim is to let people to know their full rights under UK law. Nothing on these pages is absolute as the law is always changing; if in doubt contact a trusted solicitor for further advice. We do not encourage you to break the law.

Please feel free to copy and distribute these articles to fellow activists, but do not alter the text in any way. These articles are anti-copyright for non-commercial purposes. Please visit www.freebeagles.org for the latest version of our articles and to learn about the freeBEAGLES Ethical Open Document License under which this document is distributed.
If you see any errors, or we have missed any changes to the legal situation please contact us as soon as possible, at  info@freebeagles.org, as wrong information can prove costly to people's freedom.

© Copyright freeB.E.A.G.L.E.S. 2004; last updated: March 2004.