Legal observer
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Legal observers are individuals, usually representatives of human rights agencies, who attend public demonstrations, protests and other activities where there is a potential for conflict between the demonstrators and the police, security guards or other law enforcement personnel. The purpose of legal observers is to monitor any illegal or improper behaviour by the police.
It is fair to say that most legal observers have an explicit commitment to supporting the right to peaceful assembly, which is guaranteed by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the United States Constitution and other national and international human rights treaties.
It is thought that the concept of using legal observers first emerged during protests in the 1930s in the East End of London, where police agents provocateurs were used during protests by the British Union of Fascists (BUF). There were large counter-protests and it was alleged that the police sided with the BUF. Another case of legal observing was that carried out by the Black Panthers in the United States.
Legal observers were used by Liberty (then known as the National Council for Civil Liberties) in Wapping, London, during the mid-1980s. The Wapping demonstration was in response to large protests by labour unions against the industrial relations policies of media magnate, Rupert Murdoch. However, the modern revival of Legal Observers seems generally to have begun about 2000, when there were large public protests in Europe, North America and Australia. The more recent wave of legal observers participation has been a direct response to what is perceived to be more aggressive policing by law enforcement agencies.
Legal observers are associated with such groups as the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union (both USA), Liberty (UK), the G8 Legal Collective (Scotland), and others. In Australia, the Legal Observers Project, formally based at the Community Law Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, and re-named Human Rights Monitors, was established in April 2001, making it one of the first in the recent revival of legal observing.
