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House of Lords

A man pushed past several people in a bus queue, in an attempt to 'jump'the queue. The man at the head of the queue was a police officer, off duty and in plain clothes, who restrained him from carrying out his intention and pulled him away from the bus. He told him that he was a police officer and that if he did not stop struggling he would arrest him. The magistrates later held that, in his excited state, the man did not believe that it was a police officer who was addressing him. In the ensuing struggle, the police officer received about half a dozen blows in the stomach and he arrested the man and charged him with assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty contrary to section 51 of the Police Act 1964. At the trial, the police officer claimed that he had acted as he had done because he feared that a breach of the peace would follow from the man's attempt to 'jump' the queue. The Justices held that in the circumstances the police officer had the right to detain the person without an arrest and to use a reasonable amount of force to prevent a breach of the peace. The man's reaction to the police officer's preventing him from boarding the bus amounted to a continuing breach of the peace. The justices also found that the man's belief that his opponent was not a police officer was unreasonable, but added that, if he had been unlawfully detained, the blows which were the basis of the charge of assault would have veen no more than reasonable force to effect his release from that unlawful detention. A case was stated for the opinion of the High Court on two questions: (1) whether a police constable who reasonably believes that a breach of the peace is about to take place is entitled to detain a person without arrest to prevent that breach of the peace, and (2) whether a person who is detained in these circumstances, but who does not believe the police constable to be a police constable in the execution of his duty, is guilty of an offence, if he uses no more force than is reasonably necessary to protect himself from what he honestly, but unreasonably, belives to be an unjustified assault and false imprisonment. The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal (see [1981] 2 W.L.R. 1070) on the ground that the only exception to the principle that to detain a man without arresting him is an unlawful act is where the detention is by a constable acting in the execution of his duty. On that