Symon Hill was walking back from church on a sunny autumn Sunday when he realized his route was blocked; the roads around Carfax Tower in Oxford were closed off. It was September 11, the day after Charles Windsor had been officially proclaimed King Charles III in London, and local events were being held nationwide.
This ceremony, organized by the council, typified the pomp and pageantry. Hill is a quiet, thoughtful man of 46, but it doesn't take much to rile him when it comes to the monarchy. He was looking forward to spending the afternoon relaxing with his housemates in their garden, and now he was stuck in a celebration he regarded as archaic and irrelevant.
Hill is a Christian, historian, pacifist, teacher, writer, activist and republican. At the start of the ceremony, which focused on the queen's death, he was silent: "I wouldn't interrupt somebody's grief." But when "they declared Charles rightful liege lord, and acknowledged our obedience to him as our only king", Hill had heard enough. "I find this language very demeaning, and I called out 'Who elected him?'" To his astonishment, he found himself surrounded by security, arrested and eventually charged under the Public Order Act 1986.
Hill's arrest made the newspapers. Not because he had been an extreme or dramatic protest, but because it had been so mild. How could it have resulted in a criminal charge? On the same day, a 22-year-old woman who allegedly held a placard reading “Fuck imperialism, abolish monarchy” was arrested in Edinburgh for breach of the peace. More overt forms of protest also made headlines. One young man chucked five eggs at the new king and, despite his failure to hit his target, he was also charged with a public order offense.