Evictions on the River Thames

[mark99]

oh please.

 

a reference to a 1932 trespass on what sounds like a barren hillside is hardly the same as modern trespass in what could well be someone's home.

 

so will you answer my previous question? Would you be happy to let anybody that wishes place themselves in ur property/garden/boat as they wish? (given trespass is their civil liberty) and leave them there till a court settled the civil matter? No matter what damage or nuisance they caused?

Yes agree it was not a good analogy. One trespass for the long term protest and benefit to all. The other a trespass for the benefit of anti social individuals taking something cos they want to.

Edited August 23, 2014 by mark99

[phill]

Yes agree it was not a good analogy. One trespass for the long term protest and benefit to all. The other a trespass for the benefit of anti social individuals taking something cos they want to.

I guess that depends on your point of view.

 

I refer you to my signature.

 

Your 'anti-social' individual may simply be someone struggling to find somewhere to live and boat.

[mark99]

Possibly. I guess I should have qualified the statement by saying assuming the paper journalist was reporting accurately and checked.

[phill]

If it is accurate this statement should ring alarm bells;

 

"This is part of an ongoing operation where the Metropolitan Police Service is assisting land owners to remove boats moored without permission."

 

There is no legal mandate for the police to 'assist' in a case like this.

 

And....

 

"Apart from being unsightly...."

 

I take it that you consider being unsightly "anti-social".

 

Perhaps you could help them out by polishing some of their brass?

[Tuscan]

I guess that depends on your point of view.

 

Your 'anti-social' individual may simply be someone struggling to find somewhere to live and boat.

Very true but guess if they boat there would be no problem with trespassing on private land , suspect as always this has come about by a few acting in a way that has ruined what in the past been a place where others have moored without any difficulty.

[phill]

No he explains why the police don't normally take an interest in civil matters.

 

I was more taken by your statement about them having no jurisdiction in a 'free state.', whatever one of those is.

Sorry if I didn't explain it simply enough. Police have no jurisdiction in civil matters in a free country

 

I hope that helps.

[Guest]

Sorry if I didn't explain it simply enough. Police have no jurisdiction in civil matters in a free country

I hope that helps.

Yup, it explains a lot.

[lexicon]

I guess that depends on your point of view.

 

I refer you to my signature.

 

Your 'anti-social' individual may simply be someone struggling to find somewhere to live and boat.

sorry don't buy that as an excuse.

 

so as im hard up, i should be allowed to moor where i like if it makes my life easier? Without worrying about paying or whose land it is?

[mark99]

If it is accurate this statement should ring alarm bells;

.

Only In your mind where I'd imagine there is quite an echo.

[phill]

Only In your mind where I'd imagine there is quite an echo.

As they say- personal abuse is a sign you have lost the debate. Thank you.

Edited August 23, 2014 by phill

[mark99]

I think you will find I attempted to engage before you resorted to sarcasm. But perhaps yes it's best left there. I do support action for the benefit of all not the few.

Edited August 23, 2014 by mark99

[PaulR]

 

It is just my own way of distinguishing two sets of conditions for the sake of clarity – it is not a legislative term. You are right that land also includes land covered with water – but the trespass issue alters where the right of navigation enters the picture.

 

The Public Right of Navigation as defined in the Transport Act 1968 include the right to keep AND use a boat on the water, and as the Thames Conservancy Acts made clear, those are distinct rights. [The TC Act demanded that all boats using the Thames be registered, but if the boat was simply kept moored at the bank, then it escaped the requirement. That situation obtained right up until the specific amendments of the 2010 Inland Waterways Order.]

 

...

I hope this explains my ‘hair-splitting’ vocabulary. Of course we don’t know the specific circumstances involved in the article’s described situation, but that does not make it any less a profitable exercise to discuss the issues involved in a speculative scenario – whether those apply or not to the described events. I had already acknowledged that the quoted section prompting my response was potentially applicable at a stretch.

 

Whilst taking your point about the right of navigation along the River Thames and, more specfically, "a right to anchor moor or remain stationary for a reasonable time in the ordinary course of pleasure navigation" I'm not sure how they equate to the circumstances? If these boaters had been navigating along the Thames and had decided to stop mid-stream, anchor or cast mooring lines for 'a reasonable time' I'm fairly certain we wouldn't be discussing the matter here as it it unlikely to have had a mention in the local press and, if called, the police would have struggled to supply the officers let alone their own boat on so short notice. The fact that Thames Water had their enforcement team present tends to suggest that these boats had be in situ for awhile. The thought that Thames Water and the police have squads on standby ready to mobilise and move on any "pleasure boaters" who have had the misfortune to moor up against Thames Water property for their lunch is beyond belief. I think your introduction of the rights of navigation (especially the example you presented) is a red herring, put there to trick the unwary: The article posted by the OP was never about restricting the right of way of boats along the River Thames.

 

 

Postscript: It could be said that the right of navigation is a perpetual public ‘easement’ over the riverbed, and the land covered in water where PRN’s exist is taken subject to such easements.

 

...

No such public easements apply either in statute or common law to land NOT covered in water, hence my use of the non-legal term 'dry land'. The only broadly similar easement respecting land not covered by water, as said above, covers the use of aircraft in transit, and that by way of statute only.

 

 

I think you are mistaken if you honestly believe that "No such public easements apply either in statute or common law to land NOT covered in water". What about public rights of way across private land? A public footpath through someone's garden wouldn't be of much use if the public weren't permitted to move along it. However just because this footpath exists and a members of the public have a right of free passage along it's length, I'm not convinced it gives the user the right to stop in the garden for more than a short break to catch breath, tie up shoe laces, etc i.e. a "reasonable time". To erect a tent and stay overnight might be pushing it a bit.

[Paul G2]

With all due respect, Phil, making squatters move along may seem like fascism to you, but, if it does, then you have never seen real fascism up close and personal.

 

Kajieme Powell shooting by St. Luis Police.

 

While I applaud you for the sentiments expressed in your signature, a word of advice from an old warrior in the struggle for social justice is to choose your battles wisely. You only have so much energy, and the public only has limited sympathy and understanding.

 

Consider yourself lucky. Roughly half the population here has no problem with what happened to Kajieme Powell, they think the police were justified to execute him like that. (And that's why I can't wait to GTF out of this country as soon as I can.)

[NigelMoore]

 

I think your introduction of the rights of navigation (especially the example you presented) is a red herring, put there to trick the unwary: The article posted by the OP was never about restricting the right of way of boats along the River Thames.

 

It may have been a red herring insofar as any applicability to the reported situation, albeit pertinent to the topic of trespass on land - which was the point I was finessing, as I hopefully had explained – but why consider it “put there to trick the unwary”? Trick them about/into what?

 

I haven't suggested that the article was describing interference with rights of navigation, I was addressing your question over the point of my distinction between "dry land" and "land covered with water" in the trespass context.

 

[NigelMoore]

I think you are mistaken if you honestly believe that "No such public easements apply either in statute or common law to land NOT covered in water". What about public rights of way across private land? A public footpath through someone's garden wouldn't be of much use if the public weren't permitted to move along it. However just because this footpath exists and a members of the public have a right of free passage along it's length, I'm not convinced it gives the user the right to stop in the garden for more than a short break to catch breath, tie up shoe laces, etc i.e. a "reasonable time". To erect a tent and stay overnight might be pushing it a bit.

 

Yes you are quite right, I was being careless and should have made it more clear that I was only dealing with situations where no physical attachment to the land was present. My use of the wording “such easements” was obviously inadequate to convey what I meant. Of course there are rights of way, and public highways, across private land etc, but those all necessarily entail contact with the ground, as distinct from the situation where a boat floats over the land separated from it by water, or anything flies over it distanced by air, which was the arena I was discussing.

 

Your description of “reasonable” short breaks on highways is also correct, and almost word for word correlates to the language used in judgments on the point.

 

There was no suggestion that the boaters in question in the article had been there only temporarily; I suspect you have missed much of the point of what I was saying - or at least the reasons for my saying it. My usual communicative failure yet again no doubt.

[PaulR]

 

It may have been a red herring insofar as any applicability to the reported situation, albeit pertinent to the topic of trespass on land - which was the point I was finessing, as I hopefully had explained – but why consider it “put there to trick the unwary”? Trick them about/into what?

 

I haven't suggested that the article was describing interference with rights of navigation, I was addressing your question over the point of my distinction between "dry land" and "land covered with water" in the trespass context.

 

 

In reply to a post regards a possibility of the authorities using s61 CJPOA 1994 you asserted that;

 

"That section relates pretty specifically to encampment on dry land though, although it could conceivably be stretched to apply."

 

Perhaps my reasoning for questioning your use of the term 'dry land' wasn't as clear as it could be? I hoped that I had made clear that I thought your use was superfluous. Simply the act didn't relate "pretty specifically" to one particular type of land but all land covered by the act and therefore, in my opinion, s61 was applicable and appropriate if all the conditions in the act had been satisfied. Bearing in mind the contentious issues regarding the navigating authorities and the well documented arguments on what constitutes 'navigation' on this forum and elsewhere it appeared to me that your introduction of PRN and s79(2) Thames Conservancy Act 1932 might be a little bit of obfuscation which, as a favourite tactic of the legal profession, I am sure you have seen and had dealings with before.

 

I can be overly suspicious sometimes and if I was in this case then, my apologies for seeing something when there was nothing there.

[mayalld]

 

Indeed. Sadly I am finding out just currently how difficult it seems to be to prove theft under the relevant legislation. The police simply do not wish to know, unless the property is destroyed or otherwise shown to be removed with the intent to deprive the owner of his property.

 

In other words, you can drag a car away from its privately owned driveway, dump it in the street somewhere to accumulate charges, and it is not theft, because the perpetrator has not sought to keep it for himself nor locked it away out of your reach. It seems that applies even if, as a consequence of the way it was abandoned on the highway, the Council have impounded it and racked up thousands of pounds of charges and storage.

 

You will have recourse to civil remedies, but it is not a crime, for the police to get involved with.

Surely the difficulty of proving theft is why TWOCing was added to the statutes. No intention to deprive is needed. Mert talking without consent of the owner.

[NigelMoore]

Surely the difficulty of proving theft is why TWOCing was added to the statutes. No intention to deprive is needed. Mert talking without consent of the owner.

 

Unfortunately, in the situation I described, it apparently doesn't apply, because the cars had nobody in or on them at the time they were being moved. They were not, therefore, being used as a "conveyance for his own or another's use" during the taking!

[craftycarper]

I have know real legal knowledge but quite a good set of life skills and I think in all these cases ,c,moorers ,dale farm residents even the poor coloured kid above and most other examples thrown in to prove a point here ,is that none of them new when to walk away ,they are all given lots of notice about what the end result will be and continue to push for conflict and once they have flagged themselves up they will all struggle to live there lives below the radar ,if travellers kept travelling ,cc,ers kept cruising and the coloured kid led on the floor when a man with a gun told him to nothing would have happened I guess in all cases they chose there destiny,s

[NigelMoore]

 

In reply to a post regards a possibility of the authorities using s61 CJPOA 1994 you asserted that;

 

"That section relates pretty specifically to encampment on dry land though, although it could conceivably be stretched to apply."

 

Perhaps my reasoning for questioning your use of the term 'dry land' wasn't as clear as it could be? I hoped that I had made clear that I thought your use was superfluous. Simply the act didn't relate "pretty specifically" to one particular type of land but all land covered by the act and therefore, in my opinion, s61 was applicable and appropriate if all the conditions in the act had been satisfied. Bearing in mind the contentious issues regarding the navigating authorities and the well documented arguments on what constitutes 'navigation' on this forum and elsewhere it appeared to me that your introduction of PRN and s79(2) Thames Conservancy Act 1932 might be a little bit of obfuscation which, as a favourite tactic of the legal profession, I am sure you have seen and had dealings with before.

 

I can be overly suspicious sometimes and if I was in this case then, my apologies for seeing something when there was nothing there.

 

I am far more familiar with the tactic you describe than I care for, and the most frustrating thing about it is how often successful it is – at all levels. You were, however, mistaken in seeing any of this in my posting.

 

I am admittedly self-indulgent when making such posts as these you are engaging in, because I am trying out ways of explaining a point that actively concerns me, which will be obscure to most even if only because of the very specialised nature of it. I need to find out how successful or not my phrasing is, and in that respect comments such as yours are invaluable in highlighting shortcomings that I could never have seen for myself because I am too close to it.

 

Leaving aside the particulars of the specific case provoking the discussion, the applicability of s.61 [all else being equal] depends upon the fact of there being trespass over the land being ‘encamped’ on. The point of my comments addressed that issue, which I might better illustrate by example:

 

A group of boats lash up together as a floating community and tie up to the bank of a public navigable river, the navigation authority over which has no legislation governing private non-commercial craft. There is no obstruction or interference with navigation, and the landowner to whose land the boats are attached is either consenting or an unknown. The riverbed, however, is owned by a known party [who is maybe the opposite bank riparian owner with – unusually - ownership of the entire riverbed], who objects to the boats floating there and wants to apply s.61.

 

In such a situation, how could s.61 apply? The boats may very well be floating over his land, but they have a right to be on the water and they are not attached to the protestor’s land, whether by mud-weights, anchors or more permanent installations. There can therefore be no trespass, and s.61 would be inapplicable.

 

In a ‘dry land’ [or not ‘land covered in water’] situation, the analogous example of a cluster of hot --air balloons tethered to peripheral land but floating over your property would most definitely entail committing trespass over your land, because there is no common law right to use of the air above your property, and the [very modern] statutory right is very circumscribed.

 

Returning to the situation described in the article, if the boats were anchored in mid-stream for longer than anyone could find “reasonable”, then yes, the riverbed owner potentially has grounds for applying s.61, because they are all attached to his land. If the Water Company were riparian owners inclusive of the river moiety, that would apply. If, however, the boats were attached only to their bank, they could either summarily remove them or apply to the court for removal - because they are trespassing in attaching to that land - but it would be dubious, I think, whether s.61 could apply to that case.

 

[Mr Badger]

 

I have know real legal knowledge but quite a good set of life skills and I think in all these cases ,c,moorers ,dale farm residents even the poor coloured kid above and most other examples thrown in to prove a point here ,is that none of them new when to walk away ,they are all given lots of notice about what the end result will be and continue to push for conflict and once they have flagged themselves up they will all struggle to live there lives below the radar ,if travellers kept travelling ,cc,ers kept cruising and the coloured kid led on the floor when a man with a gun told him to nothing would have happened I guess in all cases they chose there destiny,s

 

I think I might want to draw a distinction between the inevitable and foreseeable legal consequences of continuous mooring etc. and the arbitrary and unlawful use of lethal force.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Mr Badger

[craftycarper]

I think I might want to draw a distinction between the inevitable and foreseeable legal consequences of continuous mooring etc. and the arbitrary and unlawful use of lethal force.

. I fully agree with what you are saying but if someone stuck a gun in your face and told you to stand on one leg weather they were the police or a villain you choose your course of action if the young man led on the floor when asked he would be alive ,if the Thames moorers had moved on they would,nt have been evicted by the police and so on and so forth I,m not saying what's right or wrong but all these people had the choice of fight or flight and chose to fight with inevitable endings I,m not trying to justify or condemn anyone involved but all made there own choice ,just an over simple observation by an over simple bloke

[magnetman]

Anyway they have all moved now...

The boats are still about not been taken by the aliens yet

[Paul G2]

. I fully agree with what you are saying but if someone stuck a gun in your face and told you to stand on one leg weather they were the police or a villain you choose your course of action if the young man led on the floor when asked he would be alive ,if the Thames moorers had moved on they would,nt have been evicted by the police and so on and so forth I,m not saying what's right or wrong but all these people had the choice of fight or flight and chose to fight with inevitable endings I,m not trying to justify or condemn anyone involved but all made there own choice ,just an over simple observation by an over simple bloke.

 

My point in posting the Kajieme Powell execution video was to show Phil what real modern-day fascism looks like. About ten days prior to the Powell execution, a young black man in an adjoining town was shot and killed by a white police officer as he was in the process of surrendering. He had tried to run from a police officer, who stopped him for jaywalking. The police officer fired shots at him as he ran away. The young man stopped, raised his hand in surrender and turned to face the cop. He was shot dead on the spot.

 

Did you watch the Powell video? They put three more bullets into him after he was down on the ground, completely incapacitated from their gunshot wounds. Your conjecture that laying down on the ground, even if he had been given the chance, would have saved Mr. Powell's life, does not stand up to the reality as shown in the video.

[Paul G2]

 

I am far more familiar with the tactic you describe than I care for, and the most frustrating thing about it is how often successful it is – at all levels. You were, however, mistaken in seeing any of this in my posting.

 

I am admittedly self-indulgent when making such posts as these you are engaging in, because I am trying out ways of explaining a point that actively concerns me, which will be obscure to most even if only because of the very specialised nature of it. I need to find out how successful or not my phrasing is, and in that respect comments such as yours are invaluable in highlighting shortcomings that I could never have seen for myself because I am too close to it.

 

Leaving aside the particulars of the specific case provoking the discussion, the applicability of s.61 [all else being equal] depends upon the fact of there being trespass over the land being ‘encamped’ on. The point of my comments addressed that issue, which I might better illustrate by example:

 

A group of boats lash up together as a floating community and tie up to the bank of a public navigable river, the navigation authority over which has no legislation governing private non-commercial craft. There is no obstruction or interference with navigation, and the landowner to whose land the boats are attached is either consenting or an unknown. The riverbed, however, is owned by a known party [who is maybe the opposite bank riparian owner with – unusually - ownership of the entire riverbed], who objects to the boats floating there and wants to apply s.61.

 

In such a situation, how could s.61 apply? The boats may very well be floating over his land, but they have a right to be on the water and they are not attached to the protestor’s land, whether by mud-weights, anchors or more permanent installations. There can therefore be no trespass, and s.61 would be inapplicable.

 

In a ‘dry land’ [or not ‘land covered in water’] situation, the analogous example of a cluster of hot --air balloons tethered to peripheral land but floating over your property would most definitely entail committing trespass over your land, because there is no common law right to use of the air above your property, and the [very modern] statutory right is very circumscribed.

 

Returning to the situation described in the article, if the boats were anchored in mid-stream for longer than anyone could find “reasonable”, then yes, the riverbed owner potentially has grounds for applying s.61, because they are all attached to his land. If the Water Company were riparian owners inclusive of the river moiety, that would apply. If, however, the boats were attached only to their bank, they could either summarily remove them or apply to the court for removal - because they are trespassing in attaching to that land - but it would be dubious, I think, whether s.61 could apply to that case.

 

 

How did the people moored to the water company property get to land, do you know? Wouldn't there be separate ramifications of trespass on dry land if they were crossing water company property to gain access to and from their boats?

 

In the case specific to the water company docks, does the water company draw water from the Thames to use in their system? If the boats in question never moved, it's pretty safe to assume they are flushing their toilets directly into the river. Wouldn't there be health concerns if they were flushing waste close to a water intake?