“The right to protest is a fundamental principle of our democracy, but this is not absolute.” These were the words with which then prime minister Rishi Sunak, in 2022, announced the introduction of the most draconian anti-protest laws in recent British history.
Over the last couple of years, those wishing to take to the streets in principled opposition to government policy or corporate greed have seen their protections rapidly diminish. Those who were involved in demonstrations before Covid may remember how, in order to arrest a person for violating conditions placed upon a protest, the police were required to prove that the aforementioned person had been directly informed of these conditions by an officer.
Now, in accordance with the 2022 Policing Act, a person can be detained and convicted on the grounds that these were details they ‘ought’ to have known. Similarly, until recently there were certain restrictions which could only be placed on demonstrations if they risked sparking “serious public disorder”; now, they can be forcibly dissolved for simply being too ‘noisy’- indeed, people have been arrested for handing out rape alarms, on suspicion of the new offence of ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’.
The sentences handed to protestors partaking in non-violent civil disobedience- peaceful and conscientious breaches of the law undertaken so as to bring about change or raise awareness of an issue- are also longer than ever. Last month, two young people were sentenced to prison terms of two years and 20 months respectively for having thrown soup at the pane of glass protecting Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ in order to call attention to the urgency of the climate crisis, reportedly causing “minor damage to the frame”.
In December last year, a man was sentenced to six months in prison under the 2023 Public Order Act for ‘interference with key public infrastructure’- a fairly melodramatic way to describe the act of walking down a road for half an hour as part of a slow march. When five activists (nicknamed the ‘Whole Truth Five’) from the same group were jailed in July for between four and five years for having organised action which caused major disruption to traffic, UN representatives lamented the implications of the longest prison sentences ever handed to non-violent protesters.
These new laws were explicitly constructed in response to the wave of environmental rights protests around the turn of the decade. That ministers are often quick to lend an ear to generous thinktanks funded by dubious benefactors is common knowledge. Yet it is still striking to see just how diligently the 2022 Policing Law follows the recommendations in the report released by Policy Change- a thinktank which financially contributed to the campaigns of ministers supervising the legislation, and which has in turn received significant donations from the oil giant ExxonMobil- a few months prior.
Whilst these laws were passed under the Tories, those who hoped for a different approach under Labour were left disillusioned. A few months ago, the current Home Secretary decided to continue with an appeal, launched under Rishi Sunak, against a court ruling that voided the decision to give the police powers to enforce the dispersal of demonstrators if it was determined that they were interrupting others’ day-to-day activities “to more than a minor degree”. As much as they may pose as environmentally conscious, passing important yet desperately inadequate reforms, Labour has decided that their relationship with oil firms and other pernicious corporations take priority.
It is important to note, nonetheless, that the state’s crackdown on protestors has emanated not only from the legislature but also the judiciary. In March, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Attorney General to remove the ability of those charged with a protest-related offence to use their conviction in the urgency of their cause as a defence in court. The judge presiding over the ‘Whole Truth Five’ trial forbade the defendants from making any reference to the climate crisis whatsoever in their closing remarks.
These disquieting developments illustrate how the judiciary is becoming increasingly aligned with the government on the issue of limiting freedom of expression (indeed, a freedom of information request revealed how at least one representative of the Crown Prosecution Service attended meetings aimed at reassuring arms manufacturers concerned about the impact of activists, alongside Home Office officials).
At a time when flooding and droughts linked to the climate crisis have already displaced tens of millions of people and risk causing the deaths of millions more in the next few decades, when British weapons are being wielded to kill civilian families in Gaza, the state is showing more explicitly than ever how it defends the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary people. This remains the same no matter whether the government is Conservative or Labour.
Protest is an avenue taken when all other options are inadequate. Their purpose- beyond creating awareness and forming a community- is to create disruption, thus putting pressure on an institution to take action; no politician or businessperson who has remained unmoved by petitions and emails will be convinced to take personally disadvantageous action by a small, meek and orderly assembly of people.
To condemn someone to years in prison for dirtying a glass screen should be unthinkable; indeed, as the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, Michel Forst, pointed out, any sort of imprisonment for peaceful demonstration was nigh unheard of in the UK following the 1930s.
That is not to say that those intentionally violating the law through non-violent direct action cannot expect consequences. In point of fact, such activists anticipate and accept arrest. Yet to hand people who peacefully put themselves on the line in the hopes of saving the lives of others prison sentences longer than those handed to rapists and burglars is unjustifiable, whether you are an environmentalist, a pro-Palestinian activist, or not.
Image: OwenBacker
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