Gilmour gets 16 months for protest ‘rampage’

The son of Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour has been jailed for 16 months after a drug-fuelled rampage through central London on a day of student protests last year. The 21-year-old Cambridge undergraduate had taken valium and LSD before the demonstration and was one of a group of 100 people who attacked the convoy carring Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall in Regent Street.

Charlie Gilmour was also photographed swinging from a Union Jack flag on the Cenotaph, an image that caused outrage and was posted on the Daily Mail website alongside a plea to its readers to identify the protestor.

During the hearing, Kingston Crown Court was shown footage of Gilmour waving a red flag and shouting slogans. In one clip he even managed to sound like Charlie Sheen as he yelled: "Let them eat cake, they say.

We won't eat cake, we will eat fire, ice and destruction, because we are angry - very fucking angry."

He urged the protestors to "storm parliament" and shouted: "You broke the moral law, we are going to break all the laws." Gilmour was also shown setting fire to a pile of paper outside the Supreme Court and encouraging demonstrators to commit arson.

Gilmour admitted a charge of violent disorder and was warned on Thursday that he could face jail. Judge Nicholas Price QC passed sentence today after considering whether the accused had thrown a rubbish bin at one of the vehicles in the royal convoy. He eventually decided that he had and jailed the student for 16 months.

He said that Gilmour's actions at the Cenotaph did not constitute violent disorder but were "outrageous and deeply offensive". He told the student: "It caused public outrage and understandably so... You have shown disrespect to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, to those who fell defending this country."

Before the court case, Gilmour had apologised and claimed he was not aware of the significance of the war memorial in Whitehall. But he was told by Judge Price: "For a young man of your intelligence and education and background to profess to not know what the Cenotaph represents defies belief."

Gilmour's supporters on Twitter expressed shock at the length of his sentence. New Statesman legal correspondent David Allen Green agreed it was harsh but pointed out it was half the sentence handed down to Edward Woollard, who dropped a fire extinguisher from the roof of Millbank, narrowly missing police officers below.