Public order

The answer to the question “What were the limits to the right of lawful assembly and protest on the highway?” was inevitably fact-sensitive and normally depended on a number of factors. Those included, inter alia, the extent to which the continuation of the protest would breach domestic law, the importance of the precise location to the protesters, the duration of the protest, the degree to which the protesters occupied the land, the extent of the actual interference the protest caused to the rights of others (including the property rights of the owners of the land and the rights of any members of the public). It could be appropriate for the court to take into account the general character of the views whose expression the European Convention on Human Rights had been invoked to protect.