Not Guilty as the day he was born! |  | |||||||||
| Vincent Blethell spent five months in prison. His crime? Well, that’s the point. Vincent will say that his only crime is being himself; that he, and all other human beings, is intrinsically illegal. He was arrested for a public nuisance offence during one a string of naked public protests and denied bail because of his refusal to abandon his campaign. During his stay, his determination to stay naked, led to him being kept alone in his cell without visitors or the other small luxuries enjoyed by other prisoners. But the jury unanimously decided that the only man to appear naked in a British court was not guilty; quite an astonishingly open minded start to the new millennium. | ||||||||||
 | As Vincent punched the air shouting, “being human is not a crime!” the judge warned Vincent that the verdict simply meant that there was simply not a public nuisance in these particular circumstances. Until this verdict, according to Vincent, only way you could legalise yourself would be to cover yourself in cloth. He sees this as an infringement of civil liberty and is campaigning to change the law on public nudity. | |||||||||
| Currently there are a number of laws that we are likely to fall foul of in the course of existing; the “Public Order Act 1986 section 5”; the laws on “Breach of the Peace”; the “Vagrancy Act” and the “Indecent Exposure – Town Police and Clauses Act”. Interestingly and topically enough, in this new age of equality and equal rights, Men are more likely to be illegal than Women. Only men can be guilty of indecent exposure but women can, along with men, “Outrage Public Decency” by appearing in public without their wrapping. I have to say, that Vincent appears to have a point. But having read a recent "Big Issue" article about Vincent and then having visited his campaign web site, I find that point is somewhat dulled by the way he makes it. Vincent has appeared on television more than once and even had a whole “fly on the wall” type programme dedicated to him and his cause. But it is hard to relate to Vincent or to really understand where he is coming from. Public nudity is not a cause closest to the hearts of the majority of people yet he claims that the “average man or woman in the street can see and understand his point of view”. I have to say that the notion that we are all illegal in our natural state is an interesting one but I guess that the “average man or woman in the street” has a lot of taboos and preconceptions to overcome before they are likely to appreciate the finer points of the argument. I was uplifted by the jury verdict because it shows that there are members of British public capable of thinking for themselves; with hearts that have room in them for eccentrics like Vincent. But, despite that verdict, there is a long way to go before Mr and Mrs Average would agree with or understand Vincent's point of view. |  Vincent outside the court after the jury decided he was not illegal | |||||||||
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