The Riot Act[1] (1714) (1 Geo.1 St.2 c.5) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that authorised local authorities to declare any group of twelve or more people to be unlawfully assembled, and thus have to disperse or face punitive action. The Act, whose long title was "An Act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters", came into force on 1 August 1715. It was repealed for England and Wales by section 10(2) of, and Part III of Schedule 3 to, the Criminal Law Act 1967.
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The Riot Act was introduced during a time of civil disturbance in Great Britain, such as the Sacheverell riots. The preamble makes reference to "many rebellious riots and tumults [that] have been [taking place of late] in divers parts of this kingdom", adding that those involved "presum[e] so to do, for that the punishments provided by the laws now in being are not adequate to such heinous offences".
The Act created a mechanism for certain local officials to make a proclamation ordering the dispersal of any group of more than twelve people who were "unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together". If the group failed to disperse within one hour, then anyone remaining gathered was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, punishable by death.
The proclamation could be made in an incorporated town or city by the mayor, bailiff or "other head officer", or a justice of the peace. Elsewhere it could be made by a justice of the peace or the sheriff or under-sheriff. It had to be read out to the gathering concerned, and had to follow precise wording detailed in the act; several convictions were overturned because parts of the proclamation had been omitted, in particular "God save the King".[2]
The wording that had to be read out to the assembled gathering was as follows:
If a group of people failed to disperse within one hour of the proclamation, the Act provided that the authorities could use force to disperse them. Anyone assisting with the dispersal was specifically indemnified against any legal consequences in the event of any of the crowd being injured or killed.
Because of the broad authority that the act granted, it was used both for the maintenance of civil order and for political means. A particularly notorious use of the act was the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in Manchester.
The Act also made it a felony punishable by death without benefit of clergy for "any persons unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled together" to cause (or begin to cause) serious damage to places of religious worship, houses, barns, and stables.
In the event of buildings being damaged in areas that were not incorporated into a town or city, the residents of the hundred were made liable to pay damages to the property owners concerned. Unlike the rest of the Act, this required a civil action. In the case of incorporated areas, the action could be brought against two or more named individuals.
Prosecutions under the Act were restricted to within one year of the event.
The Riot Act caused unfortunate confusion during the Gordon Riots of 1780, when the authorities felt uncertain of their power to take action to stop the riots without a reading of the Riot Act. After the riots, Lord Mansfield observed that the Riot Act did not take away the pre-existing power of the authorities to use force to stop a violent riot; it only created the additional offence of failing to disperse after a reading of the Riot Act.
The death penalty created by sections 1 and 4 and 5 of the Act was reduced to transportation for life by section 1 of the Punishment of Offences Act (1837).
The Riot Act drifted into disuse. The last time it was read in the United Kingdom was in Birkenhead on 3 August 1919, during the second police strike when large numbers of police officers from Birkenhead, Liverpool and Bootle joined the strike.[3] Troops were called in to deal with rioting and looting that sprang up, and a magistrate read out the Riot Act. None of the rioters subsequently faced the charge of a statutory felony. Earlier in the same year, at the battle of George Square on 31 January, in Glasgow, the city's sheriff was in the process of reading the Riot Act to a crowd of 90,000 – when the sheet of paper he was reading from was ripped out of his hands by one of the rioters.
The Act was repealed on 18 July 1973 for the United Kingdom by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973[4] (by which time riot was no longer punishable by death).
The Riot Act passed into the law of those countries that were then colonies of Great Britain, including the North American colonies that would become the United States and Canada.
In many common-law jurisdictions, a lesser disturbance such as an affray or an unruly gathering may be deemed an unlawful assembly by the local authorities, and ordered to disperse. Failure to obey such an order would typically be prosecuted as a summary offence.
Acts similar to the Riot Act have been enacted in some Australian states. For example, in Victoria The Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act (1958) allowed a magistrate to disperse a crowd with the words (or words to the effect of):
Anyone remaining after 15 minutes may be charged and imprisoned for only one month (first offence) or three months (repeat offence). The Act does not apply to crowds gathered for the purpose of an election.
The same Act allows a magistrate to appoint citizens as "Special [Police] Constables" to disperse a crowd, and provides indemnity for the hurting or killing of unlawfully assembled people in an attempt to disperse them.[5] The Act was significantly amended in 2007.[6]
The Central American country of Belize, another former British colony, also still retains the principle of the Riot Act; it was last read on 21 January 2005, during the 2005 Belize unrest. Whilst there is no specific form of words provided for such proclamations, they must be made 'in the Queen's name'.
The provisions are formed in sections 231, 246 and 247 of the country's Criminal Code, providing particularly that:
Any person who does not disperse within one hour of the proclamation being read is liable to receive a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.[7]
In Canada, the Riot Act has been incorporated in a modified form into ss. 32-33[8] and 64-69[9][10][11] of the Criminal Code. The proclamation is worded as follows:
Unlike the original Riot Act, the Criminal Code requires the assembled people to disperse within 30 minutes. Paragraph 68 provides for the life imprisonment should the proclamation be ignored. In the absence of a proclamation, paragraph 65 stipulates imprisonment for not more than 2 years as punishment for rioting.
The Riot Act is seldom read in Canada, with the 1958 events in Prince Rupert, British Columbia being perhaps the best known.[12] The most recent reading was during Vancouver's Stanley Cup Riot in June 2011. [13]
The principle of the Riot Act was incorporated into the first Militia Act (1 Stat. 264) of 8 May 1792. The Act's long title was "An act to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions".
Section 3 of the Militia Act gave power to the President to issue a proclamation to "command the insurgents to disperse, and retire peaceably to their respective abodes, within a limited time", and authorised him to use the militia if they failed to do so. Substantively identical language is presently codified at chapter 15 of title 10, United States Code.[14]
To this day many jurisdictions that have inherited the tradition of English common law and Scots law still employ statutes that require police or other executive agents to deliver an oral warning, much like the Riot Act, before an unlawful public assembly may be forcibly dispersed.
Because the authorities were required to read the proclamation that referred to the Riot Act before they could enforce it, the expression "to read the Riot Act" entered into common language as a phrase meaning "to reprimand severely", with the added sense of a stern warning. The phrase remains in everyday use in the English language.
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