Nearly 400 people have been hit with the maximum £10,000 charge for – wait for it – hosting gatherings of more than 30
During Britain’s Covid crisis, the state had little hesitation in cracking down on citizens deemed to violate the rules. Just eight days before the party in the prime minister’s garden, a 45-year-old homeless man was hauled before the courts for violating lockdown restrictions. In fact, the police were so overzealous in their use of lockdown rules that the Crown Prosecution Service later found three in 10 cases had been incorrectly charged.
All in all, more than 100,000 fines have been handed out to people in England alone for an assortment of offences: from not wearing a face covering to mixing with people outside of your bubble. Needless to say, fines were not evenly distributed, with Black people seven times more likely to be fined by the police for lockdown breaches than white people. Of the total number of people fined, 371 people have been slapped with the maximum fee of £10,000 for – and wait for it – hosting gatherings of more than 30 people.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
