alt=The Riot Act|thumb|First page of the Riot Act 1714, first edition (London, 1715), with heading (caption title) "An Act for Preventing Tumults and Riotous Assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual Punishing the Rioters", one of six copies known; English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC.BL.uk) no. N53655
The Riot Act (1 Geo. 1. St. 2. c. 5), sometimes called the Riot Act 1714 or the Riot Act 1715, was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which authorised local authorities to declare any group of 12 or more people to be unlawfully assembled and order them to disperse or face punitive action. The act's full title was "An Act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters", and it came into force on 1 August 1715.
The whole act was repealed for England and Wales by section 10(2) of, and part III of schedule 3 to, the Criminal Law Act 1967, which came into force on 1 January 1968.
Acts similar to the Riot Act passed into the laws of British colonies in Australia and North America, some of which remain in force today.
The phrase "read the riot act" has passed into common usage for a stern reprimand or warning of consequences.
Introduction and purpose
The Riot Act 1714 was introduced during a time of civil disturbance in Great Britain, including the Sacheverell riots of 1710, the Coronation riots of 1714 and the 1715 riots in England.
The wording that had to be read out to the assembled gathering was as follows:
In a number of jurisdictions, such as Britain, Canada and New Zealand, wording such as this was enshrined and codified in the law itself. While the expression "reading the Riot Act" is cemented in common idiom with its figurative usage, it originated fairly and squarely in statute itself. In New Zealand's Crimes Act 1961, section 88, repealed in 1987, was specifically given the heading of "Reading the Riot Act".
Consequences of disregarding the proclamation
If a group of people failed to disperse within one hour of the proclamation, the act provided that the authorities could use force to disperse them. Anyone assisting with the dispersal was specifically indemnified against any legal consequences in the event of any of the crowd being injured or killed.
Because of the broad authority that the act granted, it was used both for the maintenance of civil order and for political means. A particularly notorious use of the act was the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 in Manchester.
Other provisions
The act also made it a felony punishable by death without benefit of clergy for "any persons unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled together" to cause (or begin to cause) serious damage to places of religious worship, houses, barns, and stables.
Prosecutions under the act were restricted to within one year of the event.
Use of force
In the 1768 massacre of St George's Fields, large numbers of subjects gathered outside King's Bench Prison in Southwark, south London, to protest against the incarceration of John Wilkes. Officials feared that the crowd would forcibly release Wilkes, and troops arrived to guard the prison. After some time, as well as provocation by the rioters, the troops opened fire on the crowd. There were several fatalities, including non-participants of the riot who were struck by stray bullets. Some scholars believe that this massacre set the legal precedent for the justified use of force in future riots.
Subsequent history of the Riot Act in the UK and colonies
The Riot Act caused confusion during the Gordon Riots of 1780, when the authorities felt uncertain of their power to take action to stop the riots without a reading of the Riot Act. After the riots, Lord Mansfield observed that the Riot Act did not take away the pre-existing power of the authorities to use force to stop a violent riot; it only created the additional offence of failing to disperse after a reading of the Riot Act. Both are understood to be related to the unreformed House of Commons, which was righted in the Reform Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45).
Lieutenant-Governor Sir Francis Bond Head and his administrators read the act during the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.
The death penalty created by sections 1, 4 and 5 of the act was reduced to transportation for life by section 1 of the Punishment of Offences Act 1837. Transportation was itself abolished twenty years later and replaced with penal servitude for the same period by the Penal Servitude Act 1857.
The Riot Act eventually drifted into disuse. The last time it was definitely read in England was in Birkenhead, Cheshire, on 3 August 1919, during the second police strike, when large numbers of police officers from Birkenhead, Liverpool and Bootle joined the strike. Troops were called in to deal with the rioting and looting that had begun, and a magistrate read out the Riot Act. None of the rioters subsequently faced the charge of a statutory felony. Earlier in the same year, at the battle of George Square on 31 January, in Glasgow, the city's sheriff was in the process of reading the Riot Act to a crowd of 20,000–25,000 when the sheet of paper he was reading from was ripped out of his hands by one of the rioters.
The last time it was read in Scotland was by the deputy town clerk James Gildea in Airdrie in 1971.
The act was repealed on 18 July 1973 for the United Kingdom by section 1(1) of, and part V of schedule 1 to, the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973. Riot, previously a common law offence, was made statutory in England and Wales by the Public Order Act 1986.
In other countries
The Riot Act passed into the law of those countries that were then colonies of Great Britain, including the North American colonies that would become the United States and Canada.
In many common-law jurisdictions, a lesser disturbance such as an affray or an unruly gathering may be deemed an unlawful assembly by the local authorities and ordered to disperse. Failure to obey such an order would typically be prosecuted as a summary offence.
Australia
Acts similar to the Riot Act have been enacted in some Australian states. For example, in Victoria the Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act 1958 allowed a magistrate to disperse a crowd with the words (or words to the effect of):
Anyone remaining after 15 minutes may be charged and imprisoned for one month (first offence) or three months (repeat offence). The act does not apply to crowds gathered for the purpose of an election.
The same act allows a magistrate to appoint citizens as "special [police] constables" to disperse a crowd and provides indemnity for the hurting or killing of unlawfully assembled people in an attempt to disperse them. The Act was significantly amended in 2007.
Belize
Belize, another former British colony, also still retains the principle of the Riot Act; it was last read on 21 January 2005, during the 2005 Belize unrest. While there is no specific form of words provided for such proclamations, they must be made "in the King's name".
The provisions are formed in sections 231, 246 and 247 of the country's criminal code, providing particularly that:
Any person who does not disperse within one hour of the proclamation being read is liable to receive a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.
Canada
In Canada, the Riot Act has been incorporated in a modified form into the Criminal Code, a federal statute. Sections 32 and 33 of the Code deal with the power of police officers to suppress riots. The Code defines a riot as an "unlawful assembly" that has "begun to disturb the peace tumultuously". When twelve or more persons are "unlawfully and riotously assembled together", the proclamation can be read by a number of public officials, such as justices of the peace, provincial court judges, mayors, and sheriffs. The proclamation can also be read during prison riots: Quebec and Manitoba have designated senior correctional staff as justices of the peace for the purpose of reading the proclamation, while other provinces will ask a local justice of the peace to travel to the prison to read the proclamation.
In the act the proclamation is to be worded as follows, or words to the same effect: