Metropolitan Police forced to pay £5K for arrest on picket line

The Metropolitan Police have been forced to pay £5,000 in compensation to a man arrested on a picket line in 2020.

Franck Magennis was arrested by police outside St George’s University Hospital in Blackshaw Road, Tooting during a strike by  security guards at the hospital on January 13, 2020.

The St George’s security guards had organised two weeks of strike action against what they saw as poor working conditions of outsourced workers at the university, organised by United Voices of the World union, of which Mr Magennis was the former head of the legal department.

Once the picket line had formed outside the hospital the police turned up in large numbers and distributed leaflets on behalf of the university to dispel the lawful picket and threatened the workers and union officials with arrest unless they left the property.

The Met detained and handcuffed Mr Magennis when he enquired about the legal basis for the warning.

“My impression is that they made this decision in advance”, Mr Magennis said, “that they wanted to arrest someone in a way that was very visible so that everyone else in the picket line would see that someone was being arrested and see the handcuffs and would immediately understand the significance.” 

Two-and-a-half years after his arrest the Met has apologised to Mr Magennis and paid him £3,000 in compensation, with a further £2,000 paid to the union settling a legal claim brought by the union under articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights before it reached the courts.

Petros Elia, general secretary of UVW, said: “When they told us to leave the university campus under threat of arrest they were in fact infringing our right to picket, because a picket line is where you stand outside your workplace and you talk to people and you explain your cause and try and convince them to stop working and support it.”

In a letter signed by Inspector Andy O’Donnell of the Directorate of Professional Standards,  Civil Actions & Inquests, the Met apologised to Mr Magennis, for “the way you were treated when you were arrested, put in handcuffs and searched”, adding that “the level of service has fallen below the requisite standard”. The apology concluded: “I would therefore like to express my regret for the distress that you have suffered as a result of this incident.”

A spokesman for the Met said: “The Metropolitan Police Service has apologised to a man for the way he was treated when he was arrested in Tooting in January 2020.

“While we constantly strive to maintain the highest standards, incidents occasionally occur when the level of service falls below that standard. On this occasion, and on the facts as known, it would appear that the level of service has fallen below the acceptable standards.”

Pictured top: Franck Magennis being arrested by a Metropolitan police officer (Picture: United Voices of the World)