The government should scrap the anti-protest laws it has passed

February 2024

This call was made in the current edition of the Amnesty magazine and refers to various laws the government has passed to curb or prevent protests taking place. The first is the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the second is the Public Order Act 2023. They were introduced mainly as a result of climate change protestors who carried out a range of protests and campaigns which were not popular with the government, the right wing media or some of the public. 

Protests, violent or otherwise, have been a feature of Britain’s political life for centuries. Indeed, the Conservative politician Ian Gilmour, who served in Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet, wrote a book Riot, Risings and Revolution: Governance and Violence in Eighteenth Century England, (Pimlico, 1993) which described the considerable number of such things which were a regular feature of life at the time. So the activities of Extinction Rebellion are neither new nor especially harmful in the light of history. It’s possible that the two Home Secretaries who pushed through this legislation were both daughters of immigrants who may not have been aware of this history. 

It is also ironic that both politicians, who are female, owe their right to be an MP – or to vote at all – to the actions of suffragists and latterly, the suffragettes who campaigned violently for those rights It is also ironic that the suffragists campaigned peacefully for around four decades and made little progress – arguably none. There were many campaigns which have led to positive change viz: ending Apartheid in South Africa, the Chartist movement, ending slavery and protests leading to the Great Reform Act. It is true to say that many of the rights we enjoy today, owe their existence to a protest of some kind to achieve them. 

It is also a sad fact of life that peaceful protests usually get ignored. There are many marches, some quite large involving many thousands, which get no coverage. But once violence erupts, it becomes news. Governments do not like protest and see them as some kind of threat to their right to govern. But protest is about the only way ordinary people to make their concerns heard or to promote change.

Both acts should be scrapped.  

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