As the dogs of war are unleashed in Ukraine, and women and men are dying defending their independence and freedom, it is timely to reflect on our own freedoms as citizens. We are debating one of the most egregious attempts to stifle our most fundamental rights, with ill thought through reforms without evidence-based justification. I am not alone in that assessment: more than 800,000 petitioners, ex-police chiefs and senior advisers as well as three UN special rapporteurs and Members of the House of Lords from across the political spectrum all have deep-rooted concerns about the Bill and its lasting implications in limiting our freedoms and dividing our communities.
Surely the freedom to protest is one of the most important freedoms. Protest has been the engine of reform throughout Britain’s history from the peasants’ poll tax protest of 1381 to the recent Black Lives Matter movement. The rights to challenge authority, to speak up, to chant and to march are freedoms that are part of who we are; we relinquish them at our peril.
Conservative Members will complain that the Bill does not remove the freedom to protest. Not in so many words, but the right to protest must include the right to be noisy. A quiet, supine protest or a protest denied because the shouting was too loud is no protest at all. The point of protest is to give a collective voice to those who feel that they have not been listened to, particularly for marginalised and oppressed communities who have been told too many times to keep quiet. The Public Order Act 1986 was introduced by the Thatcher Government in the wake of the miners’ strike. Are
Ministers really saying that Thatcher did not go far enough and that she was a soft touch on protestors? That is not how I remember it. I beseech the Home Secretary and Ministers to think again, even at this late stage.