The protester who sat on top of Arsenal’s bus ahead of their FA Cup third-round game on Saturday, doing nothing but inconveniencing a few millionaires, will be prosecuted under a law brought in by Margaret Thatcher to ‘deal’ with secondary pickets during the miner’s strike.
Proving that they’ve nothing better to do, the police identified the 42-year-old Blackpool fan, whom I won’t name because he did nothing worthy of being splashed across every mainstream media outlet, and then charged him according to a press report on Tuesday.
The law that he is being charged under was brought in by Thatcher’s anti-union government to deal with secondary pickets. A ‘secondary picket’ is defined as “the act of trying to prevent people, especially employees, from going into a company’s building when that company is doing business with another one where the employees are on strike.”
Many Blackpool fans are, of course, boycotting their club and the police have clearly determined that this fan was trying to stop Arsenal from playing in the FA Cup game, something he was never going to be able to do on his own (if that was even his intention).
The Blackpool fan is expected to appear before JPs later this month in a move that should concern anyone interested in the right to protest in the UK.
He sat on the roof of the stationary bus, for f**k sake.