LIBERTY campaigners, alongside Greenpeace UK staff and volunteers and representatives from other civil rights groups demonstrated outside Parliament on Tuesday as the Tories’ Public Order Bill, aimed at curbing protests, went through its second reading in the House of Lords.
The bill’s measures have survived three changes of Tory leadership, and two home secretaries, indicating how the ruling class will not tolerate any opposition to banana-republic Britain’s bonfire of rights, jobs and public services to appease the banks and market speculators.
Lawyers raising their objections to the Bill are unambiguous about its regressive nature.
They say: ‘The Bill comes at a time when there is an ongoing Public Inquiry into the activities of undercover officers targeting protesters and campaigners, including potentially criminal activities, sexual abuse and infiltration into children’s protest groups.
‘The subject of this Inquiry provides a powerful illustration of the excesses of State power that can occur in the absence of a legal and political culture which respects the rights of citizens to engage in peaceful protest and direct action.
‘The Public Order Bill attempts to erode that culture within the British justice system. It will discourage law abiding people from exercising their core civil and political rights and engaging in protests for fear of becoming subject to State surveillance and potentially criminalised.’
The measures included are the same ones completely rejected by the Lords in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act earlier this year.
Campaigners called on the Lords, once again, to kill these proposals.
Earlier on Tuesday morning, the groups sent a joint petition signed by more than 300,000 people into the Home Office, calling on the Home Secretary to drop the resurrected proposals and end all attempts to suppress the fundamental right to protest.
The groups say that the Public Order Bill as it stands will make it unsafe for people to stand up for what they believe in, disproportionately impacting minority and vulnerable groups.
Among the proposals in the Bill are plans to introduce Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs) which can effectively ban people from attending protests – including individuals who have never been convicted of a criminal offence – and subject individuals to conditions like 24/7 GPS tracking.
The Bill also introduces new offences around locking-on – the tactic synonymous with women’s rights movements – which the groups say will widen the dragnet and potentially criminalise protesters for simply linking arms.
Civil liberties campaigners say the introduction of protest-related stop and search measures, including suspicionless stop and search, is not only a gross expansion of police power but will further entrench racism in the criminal justice system.
The coalition of civil rights organisations have called these measures ‘unwelcome and unwanted’, calling again for protest rights to be safeguarded and protected by the government instead.
Martha Spurrier, Director at Liberty said: ‘Protest is a fundamental right, not a gift from the State. But our right to protest continues to be attacked by a government determined to silence people and hide from accountability.
‘With the ink on the Policing Act not yet dry, the government is trying to resurrect dangerous anti-protest proposals that the people and Parliament have already loudly rejected just a matter of months ago. These draconian proposals strike at the very heart of protest and could potentially criminalise anyone who takes to the streets for a cause they believe in.
‘Protest banning orders will drastically expand the surveillance and punishment of protesters, even those who’ve never been convicted of a crime. New stop and search powers, and creation of new offences will further entrench discrimination and make it unsafe for people from marginalised communities to stand up for their rights.
‘From championing refugee rights to raising the alarm on the cost-of-living crisis, striking for workers’ rights, and fighting for racial and climate justice, protest today remains a crucial way for people to hold the government to account. The House of Lords must once again reject these dangerous proposals and instead protect our fundamental right to protest.’
Megan Corton-Scott, Greenpeace UK policy advisor, said: ‘There seems to be a running theme at the Home Office for bringing back unwanted and unwelcome proposals, as well as the people attempting to push them through.
‘Suella Braverman has picked up where Priti Patel left off with this zombie Public Order Bill, but this attempt to overthrow democracy when it comes to peaceful protest has already been rejected by the Lords once.
‘The fact this government, like the last, is yet again trying to crack down on our right to peacefully protest has echoes of authoritarianism. It’s crucial now that peers see through ministers’ dirty tactics of renaming and repackaging the same draconian measures and this time kill them off once and for all.’
The new laws are explicitly designed to give police greater powers to crack down on ‘guerilla’ protest tactics. It specifically names the protests of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Insulate Britain as reasons it’s needed.
New offences include for ‘locking on’, disrupting transport and infrastructure, and ‘Serious Disruption Prevention Orders’, which can restrict people’s freedom by imposing conditions on repeat offenders. Police would also be given greater stop and search powers to prevent disruptive protests.
While other bills from the Boris Johnson administration appear to have fallen by the wayside, the Public Order bill didn’t get lost during the change of government, with short-lived home secretary Suella Braverman picking up the baton from Priti Patel.
MPs passed the bill’s report stage and third reading this week, meaning it will continue in the House of Lords.
A Home Office impact assessment produced in May forecasts the cost of implementing the Public Order Bill could reach £17.9 million over 10 years, with an annual cost of £900,000, mainly for court costs.
The Home Office says ‘the main benefit is improved public safety’ from reducing the disruption of protests. It cites £122 million rising to £200 million as the cost added, for example, to HS2 by protests.
MPs on the Joint Committee for Human Rights raised concerns that a number of measures in the bill reverse the usual principle of the burden of proof falling on the prosecution. This means someone accused of an offence will have to prove their innocence.
‘By imposing an unnecessary reversal of the burden of proof they also appear to be inconsistent with the presumption of innocence and the Article 6 ECHR right to a fair trial,’ the committee wrote.
To which the government replied: ‘Placing the burden of proof on the prosecution would water down the ability to deal effectively with those who cause disruption by “locking on”. It is not unusual for the burden of proof to fall on the defendant.’
The maximum sentence for locking on offences in the bill is six months.
Jun Pang, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, warned these harsher punishments could have a chilling effect on protest.
‘Along with increasing sentence lengths, the Public Order Bill will introduce more protest-related offences which will no doubt have a chilling effect on protest, deterring people from exercising their fundamental rights.’
The government has also argued that police need to be able to stop certain protests happening.
Responding to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the government said: ‘This bill is not only about responding to guerrilla style protest tactics, but also preventing them from occurring in the first place. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that the police have stop and search powers to achieve this aim.’
Pang told the Big Issue: ‘Expanding stop and search with a view to intimidating people out of protesting is unacceptable and risks violating people’s fundamental rights. This will have disproportionate effects on marginalised communities, especially Black communities, that already experience the brunt of over-policing.’
Finally, the home secretary could be given the power to personally bring injunctions against protesters, acting dictatorially.
Ahead of the third reading of the Public Order Bill 2022 in the House of Commons on Tuesday 18 October 2022, a group of lawyers issued their statement in defence of rights.
Their statement has been contributed to, and endorsed by: Garden Court North Chambers; Garden Court Protest Law Team; One Pump Court Crime Team; Nexus Chambers:
‘The right to protest is at the heart of all of the hard-won rights that we enjoy in our democratic society. The Public Order Bill 2022 presents a grave threat to that right and would mark a regressive shift of power away from ordinary people and towards the State.
‘The Public Order Bill is a second attempt to bring into law some measures from the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act which were defeated in Parliament, due to concerns about their impact on our right to protest, alongside new measures.
‘The regressive nature of the Bill can be seen in the provisions aimed at criminalising peaceful direct action tactics relied on by protests which form a proud part of the fabric of our political and social history: including those as momentous as the women’s suffrage movement, the Indian independence movement and against apartheid in South Africa.
‘More worrying still are the unprecedented provisions in relation to the introduction of Serious Disruption Prevention Orders. These orders facilitate and encourage the monitoring, control and surveillance of members of the public who exercise their democratic right to engage in protests and public campaigns. They apply to members of the public who have not been convicted of any offence and give the State the power to:
- ban them from attending protests
- stop them from associating with named people
- stop them from going to certain areas
- monitor their online activity, and
- place them under electronic tag monitoring.
‘Our privileged position as lawyers within a democratic society brings with it a duty of public legal education, which requires us to sound the alarm when the rights inherent to that democratic society are at risk. We are coming together to sound that alarm both to parliamentarians and to the wider public.’
The Public Order Bill is an attempt to bring in a new and more dictatorial form of rule to prolong the death agony of capitalism. Better by far to sweep the whole system away with a general strike, a workers’ government and socialism.