A Hove student is to appear in court on charges of violent disorder and theft after he was pictured swinging the Union Flag from the Cenotaph during a protest against tuition fees.
Charlie Gilmour, 21, the son of Pink Floyd star David Gilmour and author Polly Samson, has been summonsed to appear at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday 10 February.
Photographs of the former Lancing College pupil, whose family have a home on Hove seafront, appeared in several newspapers and on television after the protest in December.
Gilmour, a Cambridge University student, was arrested afterwards on suspicion of violent disorder and stealing a mannequin leg.
Gilmour apologised publicly for what he described as his “moment of idiocy” and said that he had not realised that the Cenotaph in London was a memorial to Britain’s war dead.
The demonstration was held to oppose the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government’s proposed rise in university tuition fees to up to £9,000 a year for university students.
