KEIR STARMER’S Labour government’s plans to ‘tighten’ protest laws were confirmed by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on Sunday.
The new powers handed to the police are designed to stop or restrict repeated protests, arguing that ‘large, repeated protests’ are ‘leaving communities feeling unsafe’.
According to Mahmood, these proposed changes would give the police the power to judge the ‘cumulative impact’ of protests when deciding what restrictions to impose.
For the first time this will apply to static protests that they judge to be causing disruption or intimidation. Under existing law, the police do not have the power to ban repeated protests on the same site. This power is at present restricted to marches.
In addition, the police will also be given even greater powers to restrict the size and duration of both static demonstrations and marches, including the power to set tighter limits on the number of people attending and complete control over location and timing of demonstrations.
The police would also have a new power to order organisers to move demonstrations to another place if the police officer in charge rules it will cause ‘ongoing disruption’.
Anyone ignoring the police-imposed conditions could be liable to up to six months in prison and an unlimited fine under Labour’s proposed changes.
These new plans to impose even further restrictions on mass demonstrations against Zionist genocide in Gaza and in support of an independent State of Palestine are expected to become law as part of a Crime and Policing Bill due later this year.
But before that bill comes before Parliament, Mahmood made it clear she wants immediate action to stamp down on the Palestine Action static protests and the massive demonstration in London next Saturday October 11 marking the second anniversary of the genocidal war against Palestinians.
Mahmood said that she is writing to Chief Constables urging them to use ‘the full range of powers’ currently available and that Starmer’s Labour government is considering granting police the power to ban protests outright.
The immediate justification for this draconian attack on the democratic rights of workers and youth to demonstrate their opposition to genocide is the continuing static peaceful demonstrations against Labour designating Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ organisation.
Around 500 people were arrested last weekend for the crime of holding placards expressing support for Palestine Action and opposition to genocide, bringing the total number arrested so far to over 2,000.
The majority of those arrested have been elderly, yet according to Mahmood and Starmer they, along with the hundreds of thousands of workers and youth who have marched peacefully in support of Palestinians, are responsible for creating fear throughout the Jewish community.
Yesterday Shami Chakrabarti, a Labour peer and former Shadow Attorney General, warned that these new powers would end up in the hands of a Nigel Farage-led government, saying Labour ‘should think about new powers in Farragist hands.’
One unnamed Labour MP told the Guardian newspaper: ‘We must not fall into the trap of making rushed laws which can be used in future to stop justifiable protests.’
However, it is not some ‘trap’ that Starmer and Mahmood are walking into but a deliberate strategy of implementing measures designed to create conditions for a police state in Britain.
Granting the police absolute powers to ban marches and static demonstrations will inevitably see them being used against mass strikes by workers.
After all, there is nothing more static than a mass picket, or more likely to create disruption and cause bosses to feel ‘unsafe’ about their profits.
Starmer’s Labour government is moving towards a police state at the same time as its faces massive opposition to its support for Zionist genocide in Gaza and also at the same time as it prepares to unleash a class war at home to impose brutal austerity cuts on workers to rescue bankrupt British capitalism.
British workers will not tolerate the establishment of a police state in the UK. There is no doubt that workers will demand the TUC mobilises the strength of the working class by calling a general strike to bring down the Starmer government and go forward to a Workers Government and socialism. This is the only way forward.
