Monday, January 16, 2023
The latest threat to our freedoms
The slow but inexorable chipping away at our rights and freedoms by this Tory government is continuing this week with Ministers planning to lay an amendment to the public order bill to toughen its crackdown on “guerilla” tactics used mainly by environmental protesters.
The Guardian says that the clause is intended to deal with protest groups’ changing tactics, such as slowing traffic to a crawling pace by carrying out walking protests through big cities. Just Stop Oil protesters have used walking protests to draw attention to the climate emergency after the government introduced laws to stop other forms of pop-up demonstrations:
Sunak said the proposals would be tabled through an amendment to the public order bill, which will be debated in the House of Lords this week. The change would broaden and clarify the legal definition of “serious disruption” and allow police to consider protests by the same group on different days or in different places as part of the same wider action.
No 10 said it would mean that police “will not need to wait for disruption to take place and can shut protests down before chaos erupts”. The amendment will now be debated in the House of Lords, where it is likely to face a battle, and its passage will depend on whether it attracts the support of Labour and crossbenchers.
Civil liberty campaigners and protest groups last night said they fear the government’s overly draconian approach.
Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former director of Liberty, who is challenging some elements of the bill in the House of Lords, said the government’s attempt to get even more powers was “very troubling”.
“The definition of what counts as serious disruption is key to this bill because it is used as a justification for a whole range of new offences, stop and search powers and banning orders. If you set the bar too low, you are really giving the police a blank cheque to shut down dissent before it has even happened,” she said.
Patsy Stevenson, who was arrested at the vigil on Clapham Common for murdered Londoner Sarah Everard, said the bill was “outrageous”.
She added: “I think this bill is going to cause so much damage. This bill is basically like the government saying: ‘We will do whatever we want, regardless of how the public feel about it,’ because once you ban protesting, that bans free speech completely.”
Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, said the new proposals are “an attack on our rights” that “must be resisted”. She added they “should be seen for what they are: a desperate attempt to shut down any route for ordinary people to make their voices heard”.
She said: “Allowing the police to shut down protests before any disruption has taken place, simply on the off-chance that it might, sets a dangerous precedent, not to mention making the job of officers policing protests much more complex.”
The idea that police can anticipate action by protestors and take steps to shut them down is a particularly dangerous threat to our civil liberties. However, Anna Birley, co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, has another equally valid point. She says:
“We cannot claim to live in a healthy democracy if our government is curbing our fundamental human rights and if new powers to crack down on dissent are being handed over to police forces grappling with institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia.”
How the police use these new laws is going to be crucial, but it should not be up to unelected and largely unaccountable officers to define our democratic rights, especially when they have lost the confidence of a large number of those they are meant to serve.
The Guardian says that the clause is intended to deal with protest groups’ changing tactics, such as slowing traffic to a crawling pace by carrying out walking protests through big cities. Just Stop Oil protesters have used walking protests to draw attention to the climate emergency after the government introduced laws to stop other forms of pop-up demonstrations:
Sunak said the proposals would be tabled through an amendment to the public order bill, which will be debated in the House of Lords this week. The change would broaden and clarify the legal definition of “serious disruption” and allow police to consider protests by the same group on different days or in different places as part of the same wider action.
No 10 said it would mean that police “will not need to wait for disruption to take place and can shut protests down before chaos erupts”. The amendment will now be debated in the House of Lords, where it is likely to face a battle, and its passage will depend on whether it attracts the support of Labour and crossbenchers.
Civil liberty campaigners and protest groups last night said they fear the government’s overly draconian approach.
Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former director of Liberty, who is challenging some elements of the bill in the House of Lords, said the government’s attempt to get even more powers was “very troubling”.
“The definition of what counts as serious disruption is key to this bill because it is used as a justification for a whole range of new offences, stop and search powers and banning orders. If you set the bar too low, you are really giving the police a blank cheque to shut down dissent before it has even happened,” she said.
Patsy Stevenson, who was arrested at the vigil on Clapham Common for murdered Londoner Sarah Everard, said the bill was “outrageous”.
She added: “I think this bill is going to cause so much damage. This bill is basically like the government saying: ‘We will do whatever we want, regardless of how the public feel about it,’ because once you ban protesting, that bans free speech completely.”
Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty, said the new proposals are “an attack on our rights” that “must be resisted”. She added they “should be seen for what they are: a desperate attempt to shut down any route for ordinary people to make their voices heard”.
She said: “Allowing the police to shut down protests before any disruption has taken place, simply on the off-chance that it might, sets a dangerous precedent, not to mention making the job of officers policing protests much more complex.”
The idea that police can anticipate action by protestors and take steps to shut them down is a particularly dangerous threat to our civil liberties. However, Anna Birley, co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, has another equally valid point. She says:
“We cannot claim to live in a healthy democracy if our government is curbing our fundamental human rights and if new powers to crack down on dissent are being handed over to police forces grappling with institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia.”
How the police use these new laws is going to be crucial, but it should not be up to unelected and largely unaccountable officers to define our democratic rights, especially when they have lost the confidence of a large number of those they are meant to serve.
