Videographer arrested again, government gets tricksy

Crowning sorry

POLICE seem to crave Rich Felgate's company. They arrested him again during the coronation on 6 May.

This time, he reports - with video - that he was arrested whilst filming a @JustStop_Oil supporter holding a banner on the pavement near the coronation route. He is a member of BECTU, the union for film, TV and theatre workers that is a part of Prospect union.

The scene of Rich Felgate's arrest on 6 May 2023: protester says "there's a journalist with a press pass next to me who is being arrested for his actions"

Image © Rich Felgate

Rich tells the Freelance that he was released under investigation. He will decide on next steps after he has heard the outcome from the police.

"These arrests," he says, "are a worrying signal of the authoritarian direction of this government. Sadly, my being arrest as a film-maker is not an anomaly."

Rich has, not surprisingly, been accused of being "too close" to protesters. "I think of myself primarily as a filmmaker," he says: "I'm not reporting for the 10 O'clock News. Anyway, so many journalists have an angle. Mine is to hold a mirror up to the climate movement, to document people's stories on the ground." While making the documentary FINITE: The Climate of Change Rich spent a year and a half living in protest camps in the UK and Germany with the communities featured in the film.

But "the police sometimes seem to have a very narrow view of what journalism is." And Rich notes that "250 climate change protesters at imprisoned in the past year... the government is trying to stop protests and reporting of them rather than tackle the causes of people protesting."

"Association with protesters is completely necessary to make a documentary," Rich observes. "Often the police think they can pick me up and get me out of the way... they see that a way to make protests ineffective is to stop them being reported."

This is the third time Rich has been arrested for film-making. On 7 November 2022 he was arrested alongside NUJ photographer Tom Bowles while filming a Just Stop Oil action on the M25 motorway. On 23 November the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire said he was "truly sorry" that his officers had arrested Rich, Tom and LBC radio reporter Charlotte Lynch.

Earlier, on 4 October Rich was arrested at another Just Stop Oil action in Shoreditch. He tells the Freelance that police "alleged that I had helped the protesters in their action involving a Van Gogh painting by passing them a fire extinguisher. That was so far-fetched they're not even trying - the protesters famously used soup, not a fire extinguisher."

The scene of Rich Felgate's arrest on 6 May 2023: police officer says "you can put that way please sir"

Image © Rich Felgate

Government shenanigans

Members of the House of Lords have highlighted the use of regulations to bring in measures previously rejected by Lords in a vote. "The changes to the law proposed by the Regulations were rejected by this House when they were debated during the passage of the Public Order Act 2023 just a few months ago," notes the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee: "As far as we can ascertain, this is the first time a Government has sought to make changes to the law by making those changes through secondary legislation even though those same changes had been rejected by Parliament when introduced a short while before in primary legislation."

The main proposed change concerns the definition of "Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community". The Draft Regulation would define this as including, for example, "a hindrance that is more than minor to, the carrying out of day-to-day activities". The stray comma is in the original.

Contrariwise, no Regulation is yet in effect to bring into force the minor protections for journalists that were inserted into the Act, reports Josiah Mortimer of Byline Times. These will not come into force, he says, before July.

© Mike Holderness

Journalists arrested covering protest Nov 2022