Tories Want to Silence Dissent

Other than at a General Election – an event occurring at five-yearly intervals that hands unconstrained power to a Party that wins a majority – a citizen has but one way of registering dissent at what is done in their name: the right to protest. Yesterday the Government announced its intention to legislate that right out of meaningful existence.

The legislative proposal comes in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021. It grapples with everything from road traffic offences to confected culture war issues like the protection of war memorials. But it also contains provisions that should concern each and every one of us.

Silencing dissent

High-profile protests around Brexit, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the climate crisis have been thorns in the Government’s side over the last couple of years. By and large, these protests have been peaceful and have acted as effective ways for people to express their dissatisfaction with the Government.

However, the Home Secretary, in particular, doesn’t seem to like dissenting voices – nor does she want to engage with the root causes of these protests, preferring instead to brand protesters “so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals” and to accuse them of “hooliganism and thuggery”.

The Government’s proposed solution? To clamp down hard on the right to protest.

The Bill as it stands would give sweeping new powers to the police to restrict peaceful protests – including:

• By giving them the powers to set conditions on the duration of protests
• Set maximum noise levels
• Put restrictions on where protests can take place.

As it seems to us, the very purpose of the right to protest is to enable people to register their profound unhappiness or strength of feeling in a way which compels the State to respond. To legislate so that right cannot have any impact is to legislate it out of meaningful existence.

The disproportionate measures proposed in the Bill also risk undermining the freedom of assembly and association protected under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.

It should worry us all that the Government has chosen to attack our rights. We want to fully understand the human rights implications of this Bill, and have instructed an experienced QC and junior barrister from Matrix Chambers to provide us with written advice on this.

Thank you,

Jolyon Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
https://goodlawproject.org

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