In dropping the case, the CPS said that the “no previous participation” would not be considered in future prosecutions – effectively rendering us guilty despite the lack of trial. As it stands, I have not committed any crime; I have not been found guilty by a court of law, and as such I should be considered innocent. My previous participation in anti-cuts action is not a secret, there are plenty of videos of me on youtube, and I have been filmed by police “Forward Intelligence” and “Evidence Gathering” teams on numerous occasions. What I have never had is a criminal conviction – and the lack of criminal conviction is one of the reasons my case was dropped. “No previous participation” is a neat phrase which really means no criminal conviction.

Now that’s an irksome thing, and alone it might not be enough to make me revive my case, but the revival also gives me a way to highlight the injustice that continues in the prosecution of 30 defendants, as well as the broader issue of political prosecutions.

The CPS dropped the case because they say it is not in the public interest to prosecute me for the following reasons:

"The public interest factors that the Crown has taken into account in deciding to discontinue the charge or charges are the lack of evidence of pre-meditation; lack of involvement in the planning and organisation of the offence; and that the incident, as far as your clients are concerned appears to be an isolated incident that, to date, has not been repeated."

Despite some or all of these reasons also applying to the 30 other defendants, they continue to waste time and money prosecuting them. I am sure that the other defendant from Birmingham had no idea where we were going, was not involved in organising the protest and has not sat down in Fortnum and Mason’s since then. I would say the same about the other defendants that I know, though with less certainty.

The CPS have picked these 30 people almost arbitrarily. One group of people, those with previous convictions for aggravated trespass, have been chosen simply because they have that previous conviction – even though these convictions are unrelated to anti-cuts action – the 3 in this group I know picked up their convictions as part of climate camp protests – protests which have seen cases collapse because of the involvement of undercover police.

The other groups have been chosen because they have leaflets, banners or umbrellas. The umbrellas sounds particularly ridiculous, but we were led to Fortnum and Mason by people carrying umbrellas so there is some logic to it.

However, the logic fails when you stop to think that those who led us there would likely have been experienced activists, well aware of the dangers of being identified as an organiser (and the potential for conspiracy charges that brings) and I would assume that they will have dropped the umbrellas, possibly never even entered Fortnum and Mason, and will certainly not have walked out with them in their possession.

Does carrying leaflets or banners show pre-meditation, or an involvement with organising an action? It can, but doesn’t necessarily, it’s very easy to go to an action and take leaflets from someone else to hand out.. banners can be pre-painted – someone like me who knew this would be an anti-tax avoidance action could paint a general banner without having any idea what was going to happen – and I saw no banners specific to Fortnum and Mason.

We should never have been arrested, let alone charged. Having been arrested and charged, the CPS should have dropped all the cases when they dropped mine. There is no public interest in continuing these cases against entirely peaceful protestors, especially when it is not clear that any crime has been committed.

The CPS should drop the remaining cases, and enter no evidence against the 21 defendants who have revived their case in solidarity with the 30 left to face trial. This is the only just outcome of this tawdry affair.

What is solidarity if you don’t live it? What are principles if you don’t stand by them?