TNAG-0081-FCO40-117-Public-Order-legislation-1968 — Page 134

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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.