The UK Supreme Court delivered a judgement on Friday which overturned the convictions of four defendants who blockaded an East London arms fair.

The main legal question before the Court concerned the relationship of criminal law with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly, as covered by Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights respectively.

In September 2017, an arms fair was held in East London which the appellants opposed by locking themselves in miniature cages in the middle of a road leading to the fair. The police tried to persuade them to remove themselves from the road and subsequently arrested them after they refused to do so. They were charged with willful obstruction of a highway without lawful authority.

Though the demonstrators were acquitted at first, following appeal to the Divisional Court, it was deemed that the first instance court had failed to properly apply the proportionality test between the rights of the appellants and those of other members of the public. The protestors thus appealed to the Supreme Court.

A review of ECHR case law led the Court to conclude that the protection of Articles 10 and 11 covers protests of intentional disruption obstructing others. However, the Court also found that the extent of the disruption should also be taken into account in the proportionality test and that an intention to gather peacefully is also a relevant factor.

Though the majority of the Court agreed that the Divisional Court was wrong in its application of the proportionality test and that the parties should be acquitted, the minority agreed with the legitimacy of the test but required a further examination of the facts to examine whether the rest of the judges had applied the test properly.