Naturist Action Group Tel:0844 357 5196
NAG Supporters General Categories. => NAG Campaigns. => Topic started by: Duncan Heenan on September 08, 2020, 01:51:04 PM
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Duncan Heenan started the British Naturism (‘BN’) project to address the way the police deal with nudity, when he was BN Treasurer, in 2008. This was because, though various folk in BN had had concerns over the problem for a while, no one thought to do anything about it. The “problem” being that though according to Law, innocent nudity in public was/is not illegal, it was being treated as though it is.
I launched the topic at a BN Congress and persuaded Malcolm Boura, the long-time Research & Liaison Officer, and later Campaigns Director of BN, to join me in initiating a BN project, which we did with the then President, John Paine. Our first action was meeting the then BN professional Parliamentary Lobbyist Robin Hulf in London for guidance. This was followed up by several approaches by me, and occasionally Malcolm, to the Association of Chief Police Officers (this was before the College of Policing was set up and took over the policy role). There then followed a series of diversions of effort and attention. Firstly, this diversion started when as Treasurer I discovered financial irregularities prior to my election, by which BN had been defrauded out of a significant amount of money by a previous Chairman, who was still on the EC at that time. The aftermath caused a huge diversion of effort by everyone on the EC at the time. Secondly, as this was all beginning to settle down, one of my grandsons died and for serious family reasons I resigned from the EC to devote all my time to the family for a while. Differences over policy and procedures also led to John Paine resigning as President and Reg Barlow resigning as Vice Chairman soon after. Both John & Reg left BN altogether, though I remained a member. There followed a period of EC turmoil and the single candidate election of Michael Farrar as Chairman, and his subsequent resignation mid-term, which again led to more diversion of effort and focus by the BN EC for some time.
In the meantime, a group consisting of John Paine, Reg Barlow, Peter Knight and me formed NAG, whose website you are now reading. NAG was set up to be as a complementary organisation, to concentrate on naturist campaigning, which we felt BN was giving insufficient priority to at the time. One of my first concerns at NAG was to resurrect the ‘police’ campaign I had started in BN, (which BN had abandoned on my departure from the EC). I approached Malcom Boura at BN to say that NAG was going to do this and I invited BN to join in a joint approach, to which he agreed. There was then a long process, in which NAG did most of the work ( Brian Johnson making a big contribution), of consulting all the police authorities in England & Wales, analysing their policies, approaches to the law & practice; and also attending every relevant trial available, both to support the accused where appropriate, and to research what was happening. There was an unfortunate incident during this process, when the then President of BN wrote to all Chief Constables without telling Malcolm or the rest of the campaign team, right as we were in the middle of our joint project. It subsequently emerged that she had been persuaded to do this by some new BN members who were not part of the project – a regrettable lack of communication within BN that set the project back considerably by the confusion it caused with the police. However we persevered and it was Malcolm & I, jointly representing NAG & BN, who started the negotiations with the newly set up College of Policing.
Malcom & I started making real progress in talks with the College of policing, and after a very significant meeting with their representative, the College of policing included the ‘nudity’ decision tree in the Police National Computer both as a direct result of our negotiations, and in response to the recently released Crown Prosecution Service’s Guidelines on dealing with cases of nudity. This incorporated the actual law as written, and the CPS guidance, into the police's (in England & Wales) formal procedures for investigating incidents involving nudity. The subsequent College of Policing's Guidelines are more or less a documentary version of this, and make it available at an earlier stage of investigation, and accessible for training within police forces. However I, and Malcolm, had felt that this (the Police National Computer development) was still not enough ,and some active education of police officers was necessary, but the College of Policing's representative was adamant that police training budgets were too stretched and ACPO (who held the purse strings) did not see nudity as a priority issue. Added to this Malcolm was by now becoming, ill and not able to do so much. BN did nothing to replace Malcolm as the BN liaison on this project so, taken together were the reasons the project became dormant at that point. The work and outcome of the project was given little publicity up to this point as publicity would have hampered our dealings with the police, and also the senior Police Offcier who agreed to incorporate a proper decision tree into the Police National Computer asked not to be named, and never has been. However, with the Police National Computer now containing a correct decision making aid within its structure, available to all police officers contemplating action over issues of nudity and naturism, prosecutions virtually ceased and it was inevitable that thereafter all College of Policing documents would reflect this.
A short while later the BN Legal Team was founded, and decided to re-approach the police to try to get a paper version of the ‘decision tree’ produced for police use. NAG offered to make it a joint approach with NAG again, however they chose to work alone and NAG did not want to start a 'turf war' which could damage what they were doing. NAG congratulated them on their success in taking the project further. The subsequent College of Policing document is a very welcome and accessible clarification, and should be a great help in educating the police at grass roots level. To NAG the important thing is the outcome for naturism, and turf wars should have no place in campaigning. NAG and BN worked very well together on this project over a long period, and the success is for all naturists. NAG is happy to work with other agencies in the interest of naturism, and has done so happily on other issues with BN.
NAG is proud to have initiated and carried this project forward. It has led to a significant, and we hope, irreversible change in the way naturism is treated by Authority.
The Law has been clarified, but is still not properly understood by the general public, many police officers and the press. Though events rarely get as far as prosecutions nowadays, there are still prejudices and misunderstandings to overcome and which cause upset and distress to those affected. There is a massive education job still to be done, and NAG is still seeking to tackle many of the different manifestations of this situation in related campaigning areas. Volunteers are needed to identify areas needing action in this, and to implement effective campaigning. If you could be one of those volunteers, please get in tough via this website. Or if you hear of harassment, or prosecution, by The Authorities over innocent naturism, get in touch.
Duncan Heenan