Legal Kettling Challenge

Police using the technique of 'kettling' to contain crowds during a London demonstration more than ten years ago did not breach their human rights, it was ruled today.Four people who were caught up in a 'kettle' at the May Day protest in 2001 lost their case at the European Court of Human Rights.

Human rights judges will deliver a landmark ruling today on the legality of "kettling" tactics used by British police to contain crowds.

The controversial method was used during anti-globalisation demonstrations in London on May Day 2001. Police blocked off an area of Oxford Circus and held everyone inside it for about seven hours in what was one of the first big deployments of "kettling" in the UK.

The House of Lords later ruled that the "crowd control measures" had been "necessary, proportionate and lawful".

But four people corralled inside the police cordon appealed to the European Court of Human Rights that they had been illegally deprived of their liberty.