Like Louise Christian (Letters, 15 May), I instructed barrister Keir Starmer (as he was) in an appeal about the right to protest, but we were successful. In 1999, Margaret Jones and Richard Lloyd challenged their conviction for “trespassory assembly” (during a Stonehenge protest). The lord chancellor was part of the three-to-two majority that affirmed a public right of peaceful assembly on the highway.
Philip Leach
Middlesex University
• Reading Adrian Chiles (I thought my umming and erring made for better radio. I was wrong, 10 May), surely the ultimate de-ummers must be the brilliant Hansard writers, who could make even John Prescott sound like a Ciceronian orator.
Jerry Emery
Lewes, East Sussex
