Absurd, Repressive UK Anti-Protest Measures Target Climate Activists, Leave Others Largely Untouched
Ed. - Supporting links in article at original.
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Let’s examine these three elements, and how they are already embedded. Two groups in particular are now subject to the kind of legal sanctions and oppressive policing more familiar in countries like Russia and Belarus: environmental and pro-Palestine protesters. Using a combination of older legislation and remarkable new powers in the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the 2023 Public Order Act, the police have been able to shut down any demonstration that they, the government or the media deem unwelcome.
The measures and penalties are extraordinary. People trying to prevent Earth systems collapse have been sentenced to six months in prison for walking down a street; or five years for discussing a protest on a Zoom call; or have been prosecuted for correctly reminding juries that they have a right to use their consciences; or for seeking to justify themselves in court. Hanging over all such peaceful dissenters is the possibility of 10 years in prison for the remarkably vague offence of “public nuisance”. That’s more than you’d get for most violent or sexual crimes. These are among the most draconian anti-protest measures in any country with democratic features. They are also the most extreme measures in common use in the UK for the past 150 years. The longest sentence received by any of the suffragettes, who engaged in far spikier actions than today’s climate protesters, was three months.
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Even worse is the complete abandonment of equality before the law. Whether or not you get prosecuted for protesting is now a function of who you are. If you are a climate protester, you can get away with nothing. If you are a farmer, you can get away with anything. Even when, earlier this month, farmers blocked the road with tractors where the prime minister was speaking, drowned his speech with their horns and forced him to flee, the police let them get on with it. Thames Valley police explained: “No arrests were made or necessary. The protest has reached its conclusion and the group are now dispersing from the area.” It is unimaginable that a climate protest of this kind would be allowed to reach this “conclusion”. It would have been immediately broken up, with mass arrests and long sentences.
Again, this selectivity is ready-made for the hard right. Farage has been appearing at farmers’ protests, using them to advance toxic conspiracy fictions about immigration, just as similar movements did so successfully in the Netherlands. For a century, farmers have been celebrated by the right and extreme right as the true soul of the nation, endlessly threatened by “cosmopolitans”, “globalists”, immigrants, environmental regulators and other “alien” forces. Farmers have a fundamental right to protest, as we all do. But the blatant double standards in the application of protest law – the real two-tier policing – help to pre-legitimise authoritarianism.
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https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2025/feb/22/keir-starmer-labour-illiberal-laws-hard-right-authoritarians