Two protesters were “reasonable” in calling Iain Duncan Smith “Tory scum” outside the Conservative party conference, the high court has ruled, in a rejection of an attempt to overturn their acquittal.
Lord Justice Popplewell and Justice Fordham said no fault in law was made by a senior district judge last November in finding Ruth Wood, 52, and Radical Haslam, 30, not guilty of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent.
In response to a request for a judicial review from the director of public prosecutions, the high court found that Judge Goldspring, who is also described as the chief magistrate, had made the important finding that “the use of Tory scum was to highlight the policies” of Duncan Smith, and that this was relevant to the “reasonableness of the conduct” in relation to the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.
There was nothing to undermine Goldspring’s conclusion that criminalising the words “Tory scum” would be a disproportionate interference in the two protesters’ rights, the high court ruled.
Tom Wainwright, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers representing Wood and Haslam, said the judgment represented an important defence of the right to freedom of expression.
He said: “Just the idea that someone can be convicted for saying this is bizarre in the first place. The director of public prosecutions was trying to put the burden on the defendants to show that they hadn’t crossed the line – the crucial question of when free speech crosses the line into something that is criminal.
“What this judgment confirms is that it is not for the defence to show that, but it is for the state to show that there is a good reason to restrict free speech and that a conviction is the only way that could be done.”
Wood and Haslam were outside the Midland hotel in Manchester, where the Conservative party annual conference was taking place in October 2021, when Duncan Smith, a former welfare secretary, emerged to walk to the Mercure hotel for a conference about Brexit. He was accompanied by his wife, Betsy Duncan Smith, and her friend Primrose Yorke.
As Duncan Smith crossed the road, an individual ran up behind him and placed a traffic cone on his head. The former Tory leader removed the traffic cone, called the protesters “pathetic” and continued on his way.
Haslam and Wood had followed Duncan Smith from a short distance. They separately called him “Tory scum”. Wood added: “Fuck off out of Manchester.”
Wood defended her comments on the grounds that her job working with homeless people in her local community meant she felt very strongly about the impact that Conservative party policies were having on people’s lives.
Haslam’s comments were made in a speech in which he cited child poverty homelessness, and a lack of action over the climate emergency as reasons “why people hate you, why people call you scum”. He added: “It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from what you have done to ordinary people’s lives … shame on you, Tory scum.”
Neither of the protesters had been aware of or encouraged the act of putting a traffic cone on Duncan Smith’s head.
Their comments came after Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, had been recorded at her party’s conference describing the Conservatives as “homophobic, racist, misogynistic … scum”.
The high court ruled that the defence needed to set out the facts for a “reasonable conduct defence” in relation to the freedom of expression and assembly rights in the European convention on human rights, but that it had been up to the prosecution to demonstrate the proportionality of an interference with those rights, which it had not done.
Goldspring had said: “My decision set no precedent as to what may constitute unlawful behaviour in other circumstances – but that in this case, on these facts, the use of those words did not amount to an offence, as in the circumstances it was reasonable and protected by the convention.” The high court agreed.
