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The proposed amendment could therefore give cause
for further complaint from Justice who might claim
that the substance of their original criticism had
clearly been accepted but that the measures taken
to deal with it were inadequate. It is accordingly
proposed to ask the Governor to give further thought
to this matter.
(e) Section 19 provides that when any person taking part
in an unlawful assembly commits a breach of the
peace, the assembly becomes a riot and all the per-
sons assembled are guilty of riot. Justice have
pointed out that this seems a somewhat drastic
modification of common law under which only persons
who are turbulent can be guilty of riot and that
under this Section a person could be guilty without
possessing any criminal intent. The difficulty here
is a practical one: the Police, when confronted with
an unruly mob, order it to disperse and those who
remain must expect to be treated as active partici-
pants; and if the Police are forced to separate
spectators from participants when handling a riot
there might be a dangerous hesitation in dealing
with a critical situation. The Governor therefore
considers that this particular Section should be
allowed to stand as it is. However, it is con-
sidered that the "unlawful assembly" referred to
in this Section should be confined to that defined
in Section 18 (1) and should not include the wider
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CONFIDENTIAL