CRMEP Public Lectures, Autumn 2026, 3: Peter Hallward, ‘Indefensible: The Judicial Assault on Nonviolent Direct Action'

This lecture will consider the motivational logic of nonviolent direct action, along with recent judicial responses to it in British courts. As the term implies (and as pioneering advocates like Gandhi and Ghaffar Khan explain), such action aims to compress the distance between purpose and execution to a minimum. Disarmament operations in the Ploughshares tradition (for instance the ‘Seeds of Hope’ action of 1996) are a good example, as are some more recent protests against Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Although the record is variable, up until a few years ago people prosecuted for direct action (typically on charges of criminal damage) were often free to discuss their intentions and motivations with both judge and jury, in keeping with familiar legal intuitions about intentional action. In the last couple of years, however (to cite a Court of Appeal ruling from 2024) juries have regularly been instructed to pay no attention to ‘the reasoning or wider motivation of the defendant,’ on the startling grounds that ‘those matters are too remote from the damage’ they are accused of causing. Deprived of any chance to justify their actions in terms of ‘lawful excuse’ or ‘lesser harm,’ political defendants can now be prevented from mounting any legal defence at all.