Thames Valley Police have agreed to pay compensation to an anti-monarchist protestor, accepting that his 2022 arrest was unlawful.

Symon Hill has been paid £2,500 after being arrested in September 2022 at a local coronation proclamation in Oxford. After Hill shouted ‘who elected him?’, he was approached by security guards and ordered to be quiet.

When he refused, the Police arrested and handcuffed him. He was then charged under the Public Order Act for ‘using threatening or abusive words or disorderly behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’. The charges were later dropped by the CPS.

Two years later, a claim by Hill against the Thames Valley Police has been settled. Deputy Chief Constable Ben Snuggs said that the police have ‘accepted that the grounds of the offence for which he was arrested were unlawful’. He continued: ‘public order and public safety operations are a key part of policing and it’s important we use these circumstances to help shape our future response’.

A lawyer from Liberty, the organisation which helped Hill challenge his arrest, highlighted the ongoing need to safeguard freedom of speech: ‘As even more protest-based criminal offences are being introduced, we need this Government to take a step back and look at the complex web of anti-protest laws and how it is being used. We must urgently see a review of the broad anti-protest legislation to ensure that what happened to Symon cannot be allowed to happen again.’

Hill’s arrest was not an isolated incident. Further anti-monarchist activists were later arrested at King Charles III’s coronation.