Sir Keir Starmer defended protester who defaced US flag

Sir Keir Starmer defended a protester who defaced the US flag, arguing she should be protected under free speech laws.

During his time as a lawyer, the Labour leader said the actions of Lindis Percy, a veteran peace campaigner, were permissible even if they were insulting to American citizens. Sir Keir argued there is a high threshold for limiting someone’s right to freedom of expression.

Percy, a British national, was fined £300 and ordered to pay costs after defacing the American flag by writing and standing on it at RAF Feltwell, a US air base in Norfolk.

In an initial judgement at Thetford Magistrates’ Court, her behaviour was found to be insulting to the American citizens at whom it was directed. She was convicted of using threatening, abusive and insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, contrary to Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.

But Sir Keir successfully quashed the conviction in the High Court in 2001 by arguing that Percy’s actions were compatible with her right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

According to the court judgement, he said that flag denigration was recognised as protest activity “the world over”, and has been afforded protections in other jurisdictions.

Sir Keir also insisted that the right to free speech extended to protests that others find shocking, disturbing, or offensive.

While he acknowledged Percy’s actions might be “insulting”, he argued that the absence of “something more” – for example, any racial or religious element – meant there was a “high threshold” for her conviction to be compatible with human rights laws.

He also “took issue” with the original finding that there was “a pressing social need to prevent the denigration of the US flag as an object of veneration and symbolic importance to United States service personnel”.

To find that it was necessary to protect the “sensitivities” of American servicemen was, he argued, a “circular argument” which “failed to address the issue of what it was necessary to do in a free and democratic society”.

The High Court judgement stated that Percy had spent years protesting US military policy, including the Star Wars National Missile Defence System.

Her convictions arose from actions at RAF Feltwell, where she defaced the American flag by putting a stripe across the stars and by writing the words “Stop Star Wars” across the stripes.

She stepped in front of a vehicle, placed the flag down in front of it and stood on it, the High Court judgement said.

She was also convicted of obstructing a highway, but this went unchallenged.

Sir Keir qualified as a barrister in 1989 and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2002, becoming joint head of Doughty Street Chambers, one of the Bar’s leading criminal and human rights practices.

He was appointed director of public prosecutions in 2008 and, as head of the Crown Prosecution Service, oversaw the prosecutions of Britain’s most dangerous criminals and terrorists, among others.

A Labour Party spokesman said: “Lawyers cannot choose who they work for. In this country, everyone is entitled to a defence, so lawyers cannot pick and choose their clients. That’s how our justice system works and why it is the envy of the world.

“A lawyer has to make the best possible argument for their client. What a lawyer says in court is not what a lawyer believes.

“As this country’s top prosecutor, Keir cracked down on illegal protest. He introduced tough new guidance to ban violent protest.

“He got tough on those who defaced war memorials. After the London Riots, he introduced 24-hour courts to bring justice swiftly to those who broke the law.”