Editing Riot Act (section)

==Subsequent history of the Riot Act in the UK and colonies==
The Riot Act caused confusion during the [[Gordon Riots]] of 1780, when the authorities felt uncertain of their power to take action to stop the riots without a reading of the Riot Act. After the riots, Lord Mansfield observed that the Riot Act did not take away the pre-existing power of the authorities to use force to stop a violent riot; it only created the additional offence of failing to disperse after a reading of the Riot Act.<ref name=":1" />

The Riot Act was read prior to the [[Peterloo Massacre]] of 1819 and the [[Cinderloo Uprising]] of 1821, as well as before the [[Bristol riots#Queen Square riots.2C 1831|Bristol Riots at Queen's Square]] in 1831.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/politics/transcript/g6s3t.htm |title=Awful and Calamitous Riots |work=The Bristol Gazette |date=3 November 1831 |via=[[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]] |access-date=30 July 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire (Third ed.)|last=Trinder|first=Barrie|publisher=Phillimore|year=2000|isbn=9781860771330|location=Chichester|pages=232–233}}</ref> Both are held to be related to the [[Unreformed House of Commons]], which was righted in the [[Reform Act 1832]].

Lieutenant-Governor [[Sir Francis Bond Head]] and his administrators read the act during the [[Upper Canada Rebellion]] of 1837.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/patriotesof37chr25deceuoft |title=The Patriotes of '37 : a chronicle of the Lower Canadian rebellion |last1=De Celles |first1=Alfred D. |last2=Wallace |first2=W. Stewart |date=1920 |publisher=Glasgow, Brook & Co.  |series=Chronicles of Canada |location=Toronto}}</ref>

The death penalty created by sections one, four and five of the act was reduced to [[penal transportation|transportation]] for life by section one of the [[Punishment of Offences Act|Punishment of Offences Act 1837]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Will4and1Vict/7/91/contents |title=The Punishment of Offences Act |work=[[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]] |access-date=16 July 2019 }}</ref>

The Riot Act eventually drifted into disuse. The last time it was definitely read in England was in [[Birkenhead]], Cheshire, on 3 August 1919, during [[British police strikes in 1918 and 1919|the second police strike]], when large numbers of police officers from Birkenhead, [[Liverpool]] and [[Bootle]] joined the strike. Troops were called in to deal with the rioting and looting that had begun, and a magistrate read out the Riot Act. None of the rioters subsequently faced the charge of a statutory felony.{{citation needed|date=December 2010}} Earlier in the same year, at the [[battle of George Square]] on 31 January, in [[Glasgow]], the city's sheriff was in the process of reading the Riot Act to a crowd of 20,000–25,000 when the sheet of paper he was reading from was ripped out of his hands by one of the rioters.

The last time it was read in Scotland was by the deputy town clerk James Gildea in Airdrie in 1971.{{fact|date=August 2024}}

The act was repealed on 18 July 1973 for the United Kingdom by the [[Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973]].<ref>section 1(1) and part five of schedule one.</ref>