{"id":158014,"date":"2025-09-24T18:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T18:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158014\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T18:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T18:44:10","slug":"campaigners-cleared-over-protest-at-grand-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158014\/","title":{"rendered":"Campaigners cleared over protest at Grand National"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Six people have been found not guilty of causing a public nuisance during animal rights protests at the 2023 Grand National race meeting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">A total of 118 people were arrested in connection with the protests after attempts were made to stop the race.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Six protestors from the Animal Rising campaign group were found not guilty of intentionally and recklessly causing a public nuisance in connection with the protests on 15 April 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Speaking after the hearing at Liverpool Crown Court, one of the defendants, Sarah McCaffrey, 22, from Strathaven, Scotland, said: &#8220;It&#8217;s vital that peaceful, legitimate protest against suffering and injustice is permitted in the UK.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The others cleared were Lewis Elliott, 32, from Sheffield; Marcus Emmerson, 29, from Worcester; Calum Marshall, 27, from Edinburgh; Imogen Robertson, 24, from the Bridge of Allan and Zara Verryt, 26, from Sheffield.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Ms McCaffrey said: &#8220;The verdict today shows that the general public supports the protection of horses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">She said more than 400 horses had died in races since they tried to halt the Grand National and called on the government to ban horse racing.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Animal Rising said that during the trial they had successfully argued that their concern for the lives and welfare of horses provided a justifiable reason for their actions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">They said a further four trials involving protestors were due to to take place, with the next scheduled to begin on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six people have been found not guilty of causing a public nuisance during animal rights protests at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-158014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}