:
known to the persons assembled be likely to cause some one to fear
a breach of the peace. No unreasonable limit would be placed on
the powers of the police if there were a requirement that the
persons assembled should be shown to "conduct themselves in a noisy
or disorderly manner intended or likely to cause" and this would
give a measure of protection to persons without mens rea.
The words "by such assembly" in their grammatical
context would mean that an assembly of three or more persons could
ipso facto provoke other persons to commit a breach of the peace.
If it did, we suggest that the fault would lie with the persons
provoked and not with the persons assembled. It is not at all clear
why these words have been inserted and they appear to make nonsense.
We suggest that they ought to be omitted.
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Section 12(3) has already made it an offence punishable
in the manner indicated to take part in an assembly which is deemed
to be an unlawful assembly. We therefore think it may have been
intended that the words "unlawful assembly" in s.18(3) were intended
to refer only to unlawful assemblies as defined in Part IV, but
the draftsman has not said so. Nor has he said so in s.19. If
we are right and an express limitation is inserted we have no
further objection to this section. Otherwise we must urge that the
word "knowingly" be inserted before the words "takes part": mens
rea may be imported in any event but we think the matter should be
put beyond argument, because s.12 (2) deems certain gatherings to
be unlawful assemblies even in the absence of mens rea.
Section 19.
What we have just said about mens rea with reference
to s.18 applies with even greater force here. But even if the
sections were amended to meet this objection an assembly might still
become unlawful by reason of the fact that some person might
8.