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These days, it’s just a figurative expression meaning to give an individual or a group a severe scolding or caution, or to announce that some unruly behaviour must cease. But originally it was a deadly serious injunction to a rioting crowd to disperse. he Riot Act was passed by the British government in 1715. This was the period of the Catholic Jacobite riots, when mobs opposed to the new Hanoverian king, George I, were attacking the meeting houses of dissenting groups. There was a very real threat of invasion by supporters of the deposed Stuart kings—as actually happened later that year and also in 1745. The government feared uprisings, and passed a draconian law making it a felony if a group of more than twelve persons refused to disperse more than an hour after magistrates had told them to do so. To invoke the law, the magistrates had to read the relevant section of the Act aloud to the mob, something that often required courage:
Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George for preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies. God save the King. The pains or penalties were penal servitude for life or not less than three years, or imprisonment with or without hard labour for up to two years. The Act remained in force for a surprisingly long time, only finally being repealed in 1973, though it had been effectively defunct for decades.
This Act gave the police special powers in the event of a riot - it was read out to the rioters before they got shot at!
The riot act gave police additional powers to quell riots-as opposed to demonstrations-if a demonstration was turning into a riot then the police had to make the demonstrators aware of that by somebody in authority standing and reading out the riot act- after that the police could wade in and subdue it with a heck of a lot more force than normal.
The Riot Act was an act of UK Parliament introduced to allow the local authorities to declare a group of more than twelve people to be unlawfully assembled, If a group of people failed to disperse within twenty minutes of the act being read, the act allowed the authorities to 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
It comes from the Military powers to step in and override a states police powers, it is a term known as Marshal Law in the U.S, in Australia it comes from the British.. Now day it's a term used to make it clear to all involved that a use of force is going to be actioned and we are past the talking phase..
Hope that helps.
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