New government bill in UK to affect protesters and justice movements worldwide

The new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is threatening the rights of protesters in England and Wales. The bill offers amendments on various aspects of the criminal justice system, but it is the changes to protest law that are sparking a great deal of controversy, with some fearing this to be a step towards more authoritarian government control in the UK, the home to the international environmental and social justice movement, Extinction Rebellion.

There are already laws in place to criminalise participants for engaging in seriously disruptive forms of protest, including violence, criminal damage, breaching of sections, blocking of roads and more. Additionally, most large-scale protests already involve liaison with the police over length and location, with the ability for sections to be put in place to limit these factors and arrest those who are breaking them. Now, the Chiefs of Police will be given greater power to restrict the length, duration and noise level of protests and be encouraged to place sections on a protest if deemed to be causing “serious disruption to the life of the community” and “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried out in the vicinity of the procession/assembly/one-person protest”.

So what are the issues with this new legislation? With a vague definition of what constitutes “serious harm” or “serious distress” in relation to noise levels, protesters fear that it will be too easy to impose restrictions on protests and reduce them to being virtually non-disruptive. Whilst the Bill itself, makes many defences to ensure that these powers will not be used too liberally, the policy paper states “ A noisy protest that only lasts a short amount of time may not meet the threshold, but a protest creating the same amount of noise over several days might, given the extended duration of the protest”. For an organisation being targeted by climate activists, there is room for current protest rights to be violated on these grounds. Whereby multiple days of protest are often considered necessary to create intended disruption and media coverage. This new legislation raises questions over what role the police will actually be serving in their attendance of protests and whether their intervention will no longer be instigated by concerns of public safety.

Section 14 is often used at protests to restrict the locations for which a protest is allowed to continue. At present, an officer is supposed to make clear attempts to inform an individual that they are in breach of this section before they are arrested, as a conviction can only take place if the breach was knowingly committed. The new legislation states that an individual can be convicted on the basis that they  “ought” to have known that a section was in place.

In addition, harsher consequences are being imposed for those who commit crimes as a means of protest with damage to memorials being more explicitly covered and punishable under “Criminal Damage”, in response to the increasing occurrence of vandalism to statues, such as ones dedicated to slave traders. The police will be given greater capacity to stop and search believed participants in protest. Furthermore, the common law offence of “Public Nuisance” is being revised as a statutory offence to deter people from settling in public spaces, hanging off bridges and other tactics that are common in protest. Not to mention all of these restrictions will also apply to an individual who is protesting alone.

There was a time when being arrested at a protest was unlikely to result in conviction, but now it is becoming much more common with attempts to crack down on the actions of Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter. The Silver lining, whilst thin, is that this may be an indication that the government is feeling the pressure of these movements. The obvious negative is that those fighting for justice through civil disobedience will be harshly punished for their attempts to make their voices heard. This will result in the targeting of young people who feel let down by world leaders and fear that by the time they are old enough to make a difference, it will be too late. It is also likely that people will be afraid to engage in any kind of protest out of fear of unwanted arrest and retribution.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) was founded in the UK in 2018, and has since become a global movement. Their aim is to create radical societal transformation to save the planet from the current trajectory of severe climate distress, and instigate social justice for those who are already suffering at the hands of human-induced climate change. They advocate non-violent civil disobedience as a historically used effective form of protest. Anyone who has attended an XR protest will know of their core values, where they promote loving action to heal a toxic system and ask us not to engage in the blaming of individuals. The philosophy has much in common with the vegan movement and these changes in legislation are an attack on anyone fighting for justice, be it for animal rights or environmental causes.

Unfortunately for those who wish to dispute these changes, the bill is at the final stage of consent, “Royal Assent”.

Article written by Aisling Geraghty- United Kingdom