| Undercover TV catches trio |
|
Three right-wing agitators filmed trying to disrupt a "Bloody Sunday" commemorative march have escaped jail.
The men were in a group, which charged at marchers, shouting abuse, gesticulating and trying to disrupt the event. At one point they successfully provoked one of the marchers, into launching a brief counter-attack. On Friday, Judge James Wadsworth told them he had considered sending them to prison. Undercover camera Had it not been for the heavy police presence, things would undoubtedly have got much worse, London's Southwark Crown Court was told. However, officers moved in quickly, pinned the trio against a wall of the nearby South African Embassy and kept them there until the marchers had passed. William Browning, 31, Matthew Osbury, 30, and David Haldane, 28, were also caught on camera by undercover journalist Donal Macintyre. Posing as a football hooligan, Macintyre had infiltrated the ranks of the notorious "Chelsea Headhunters", and spent months investigating organised soccer violence. He followed when his new "friends" decided to infiltrate a far-right bid to disrupt the annual central London march along Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. A copy of the footage shot at the event and broadcast by the BBC, was later requested by police as part of their case. Passing sentence, Judge James Wadsworth QC told them: "A lawful march was taking place. You three were not able to tolerate that. "You behaved badly and what was worse you did so deliberately." He said the right to demonstrate peacefully in Britain was very important and when "you interfere with that you do great damage to all of us." For those reasons he had made it clear at an earlier hearing that he thought they deserved jail. However, in view of the prosecution's decision to drop an affray allegation and because probation reports on them had proved encouraging, he had changed his mind. Two other men were jailed last year after Macintyre's football hooligans documentary was broadcast. Prosecuting, Charles Vaudin told the court: "Police had a real fear that some considerable and serious violence might occur." "The charges were a stitch-up. They [the demonstrators] deserved a kicking." Browning, of John Silkin Lane, Bermondsey, London, Haldane, from Campsie Avenue, Irvine, Ayrshire and Osbury, of Malford Road, Oxford, all admitted using threatening words and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace on 30 January, 1999.
|