Shubtill v Director of Public Prosecutions: Difference between revisions

Sir Anthony opened brightly for the respondent, arguing that the complainants’ behaviour did not attain the clarity the [[common law]] requires to construe a licence. To the contrary, he says, it hardly could be further from it.

We should not expect citizens to conduct their relations with the world in careful syllogisms: Sir Anthony concedes this would be too much. We agree: polite society lubricates its gears with subtle gestures. Nods, winks and waggled heads are quite enough to covey assent. The appellant knows this well.<ref>''[[Shubtill v Port Authority of Finchley]]''</ref>

We should not, Sir Anthony urges, lightly impute an open invitation to make mess of on a citizen just because that citizen is aggravating. The common law has long expected citizens to approach it [[Reasonable|reasonably]] and having washed their hands; it does not require them, beyond that, not to be tiresome. The mythical reasonable man is naturally a bore.<ref>''[[Fardell v Potts]]''</ref> The court agrees. We find as fact the complainants ''were'' annoying, and as law that it makes no difference: they are entitled to civil protection.

The appellants must, therefore, do enough to raise a basic sense of ''coherence'' to the the complainants’ contact as to at least raise the presumption of a licence.

And Ms. Bott’s cloth-headed oration, he contends, was nowhere near coherent. It was little short of baffling: a confused assemblage of illogicalities, sophistries, begged questions, trite slogans, miscued rhetoricals and conclusions not even hinted at by their premises. One could not with safety say that [[Violet Elizabeth Bott|Ms Bott]] understood herself.

“What,” asks Sir Anthony, “is one make of someone whose tee-shirt says “Just Stop Oil”, but who carries on to decry the cost of energy? What kind of moron demonstrates about hunger,” he continues, “by tipping away soup? Ms. Bott’s behaviour was a cry for professional help, not for a face-ful of soup.”

We were much persuaded by this line. Sir Anthony closed his submissions rather ingeniously. He invoked a principle of his own invention which he calls “unequivocality”. A [[licence]] such as this, granted by deed rather than compact, requires a clarity of conduct such that a prudent bystander could not misunderstand the complainants’ intent. Sir Anthony invites us to call to mind the “officious bystander” who first assisted the common law as long ago as 1939.<ref>{{cite|Southern Foundries| Shirlaw|1939|2 KB|206}}</ref> Somewhat presumptuously paraphrasing MacKinnon LJ, Sir Anthony suggested:

{{Quote|

The statement inferred requires conduct so obvious that it goes without saying; so that, if, while the complainants were ensouping the picture and heckling passers by, an officious bystander were to explain what with her conduct the complainant was inviting, they would testily suppress him with a common “Oh, of course!”.}}

This last submission may have been an ingenuity too far. For while the “[[officious bystander]]” was, in MacKinnon LJ’s reckoning, an objective measure, derived by reference to the mythical “amateur referee on Clapham Common” — a hypothetical figure known to all in a modern society, here we need not conjecture how an ''imaginary'' officious bystander would have reacted, because here there was an actual one: the appellant.

The appellant’s proposition is that, having loudly announced their stance, the complainants are not well positioned to object should someone else follow it. What is soup for a goose is soup for a gander, so to speak. By their own actions, the complainants licensed those who found them irritating to cover them in soup.