"Internet Law Book Reviews" Provided by Rob Jerrard LLB LLM
Bus Queue Jumpers: Does Chivalry Die With A Byelaw?
The newspaper headlines of January 3, 1995 read. "Law turns a blind eye to queue jumpers", referring to the fact that the legislation which required intending passengers in London to "wait in line or queues in an orderly manner" (London Passenger Transport Act 1938) had been repealed from January 1, 1995. The penalty was £2. The Times, who thought it important enough to run a leader, reported it thus: "Londoners wearily catching buses back to work tomorrow may be further dispirited by the knowledge that they are no longer legally protected from queue-jumpers jostling them into the gutter."
Regarding those London omnibuses, the writer has not done his research because in 1981 Mr Albert found out to his cost that such conduct can result in arrest, particularly if the person who is first in the queue happens to be an off-duty constable called PC Lavin. It never seemed credible but the case reached The House of Lords and was reported in The Times on November 28.
In Albert v. Lavin [1981] Crim. L.R. 238 a plain-clothes police officer was waiting in a bus queue, which served several routes, when the defendant pushed past the people in the queue to board an approaching bus. The people in the queue objected to this behaviour and the officer prevented the defendant from boarding the bus. A struggle took place during the course of which the officer revealed his identity and said that he would arrest the defendant if he did not stop struggling. The defendant did not believe the officer and hit him in the abdomen. The officer arrested Mr Albert for assaulting him in the execution of his duty. The justices decided that the reaction of the queue was such that the officer was entitled to believe that a breach of the peace was about to take place and that although the defendant genuinely did not believe in the officer's identity there was no reasonable ground for that disbelief. The defendant was convicted and appealed.
Dismissing the appeal, the Queen's Bench Divisional Court held, that an officer who had reasonable grounds for believing that a breach of the peace was about to take place was entitled to use reasonable force to restrain a person without arresting him. It was not a defence to a charge of assault if the defendant honestly and mistakenly disbelieved the identity of the officer and believed that his actions were justified in self-defence, unless there were reasonable grounds for that belief.
The Divisional Court certified a point of general public importance for The House of Lords, viz.,
"...whether a person charged with an offence of assault may properly be convicted if the court finds that he acted in the belief that facts existed which if true would justify his conduct on the basis of self-defence but that there was in fact no reasonable grounds for so believing."
The defendant appealed to the House of Lords, who said the question certified was a hypothetical one which had not been necessary and it would not have been proper for their Lordships to hear argument; they declined to answer it.
Held, dismissing the appeal, that every citizen in whose presence a breach of the peace was being or reasonably appeared to be about to be committed had the right and the duty to take reasonable steps to make the person who was breaking or threatening to break the peace to refrain from doing so, and those reasonable steps in appropriate circumstances included detaining him against his will.
In the 50s and 60s no bye-law existed that required me to give up my seat to a member of the opposite sex, yet I recall this daily occurrence when travelling to work in Portsmouth. By 1990 when I retired from London I had become as skilful as a kamikaze pilot at diving for the nearest seat on the underground, the system there seems to be "first through the door and equal rights for all".
Whilst you will see old fashioned, courteous behaviour at times, the fact is that public transport in the big cities is so awful that many of the fairer sex may be lamenting the day that Parliament purportedly gave them equality.
Since Albert v. Lavin one must add a caveat because of the Court of Appeal decision in R. v. Williams [1978] 3 All ER 411, which was approved of by the Privy Council in Beckford v. R [1978] 3 All ER 425. Now a defendant, who honestly believed that a plain-clothed police officer making an arrest was not a police officer and he was defending an assault upon himself, would not be guilty under s. 51(1) of the Police Act 1964 if he used reasonable force on the police officer to prevent the perceived attack. The defendant would be judged on the facts as he honestly believed them to be, justifying the use of reasonable force by way of self-defence.
Persons catching that bus, whether they intend to be that person on the Clapham Omnibus or West Yorkshire for that matter, would not have been relying upon a local bye-law in the first place but upon the Common Law of England because,
"Every citizen in whose presence a breach of the peace is being committed, or reasonably appears to be about to be committed, has the right and the duty to take reasonable steps to make the person...refrain from doing so (in appropriate circumstances includes detaining him against his will."
Rob Jerrard