There have been a lot of protests recently. In the UK alone, there have been tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian marches, UCU action within our own university and vigils held during the pandemic for Sarah Everard. But protesting has been well established for centuries in the UK, with people uniting for all sorts of causes – immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, poverty, and of course women’s suffrage and the right to vote. Internationally, prominent demonstrations include ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ marches in the US, Invasion Day marches in Australia and memorial protests for Mahsa Amini beginning in Iran before spreading globally.
Last year, the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was conceptualised. It did have some good points, such as higher maximum penalties for child cruelty offences and mandatory life sentences for anyone convicted of killing an emergency worker whilst committing another crime. However, there were serious concerns over its curbing of protesting, seen through start and finish times and noise limits for static protests, a tactic favoured by Extinction Rebellion. It also created a specific offence of damage to memorials, seemingly a response to the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol; said statue was later thrown into the harbour. This Bill was later enacted, though the vast majority of protest-related offences were removed. However, said offences managed to become part of legislation anyway through the Public Order Act 2023.
This is a very new piece of legislation, with the first arrests only being made in Spring of this year for the brand new offence of being equipped for locking on. Though this was in relation to anti-monarchy group Not My King, locking on has a historical connection to this country, with its links to the suffrage movement. The Grille Incident was one of the most famous suffrage protests, with women chaining themselves to the Ladies Gallery Grille in Parliament on 28th October 1908. Though this was an extreme and slightly dangerous action; the chains had to be sawn through to remove the women – it was an amalgamation of acts such as these which eventually led to women gaining equal voting rights to men in 1928. I do wonder if making offences such as these illegal may quell history in the making, or lead to unfair convictions of people fighting for sociopolitical change. Equally, it could be argued that the new Public Order Act offers additional protections to protestors, allowing them to enact change in a safer way.
Locking on is not the only new offence – ‘interfering with national infrastructure’ is another, and one that saw arrests made as recently as the 6th November during a Just Stop Oil protest; the slow-marching climate activists whose activities are well documented across the internet. It is this offence that really highlights the balance between the right to protest and the right to conduct daily life (which supposedly, is the whole reason for revamping the Public Order Act from its 1986 predecessor in the first place). We all want to be able to go about our day, and it can be very frustrating when traffic comes to a standstill, or there are high levels of noise for several hours. The aim of the 2023 Act is to make it clear where the boundary lies between protest and serious disruption, a term garnering an entire section to itself. Yet even before this new law, issues around the scope of police powers in enforcing protest limitations were evident, as seen at Clapham Common.
Reclaim These Streets is a movement formed in the wake of the tragic murder of Sarah Everard in 2021. Vigils were supposed to take place on the 13th March nationwide, however these were cancelled after the group was advised by the Metropolitan Police that all protests were prohibited under Covid Restrictions. Though these restrictions were essential at the time where vaccinations and wide understanding of the illness was limited, there was a crucial caveat. If a person had a ‘reasonable excuse’, they were entitled to breach these guidelines. Reasonable excuse was classified as lawful exercise of Article 10 and 11 Rights under the Human Rights Act. Combined, freedom of expression (Article 10) and freedom of peaceful assembly (Article 11) constitute the right to protest.
When RTS took this argument to court, it was found that the Met had not taken reasonable excuse into account when advising the movement; rather, they had imposed a blanket ban. Regardless of this outcome, the damage had been done – the statements made by the police had a chilling effect, and the organisers cancelled the vigil… officially. Of course, it went ahead anyway with the general public being the de-facto organiser (police handling of the vigil is a controversy on its own). This whole episode goes to show that there was already an issue with the enforcement of laws surrounding protest rights. Though I can absolutely see the benefits of the new Public Order Act, I do worry that situations like the one at the vigil will become increasingly common; unless education and guidance given to third party enforcers such as the police improves.
Overall, the Public Order Act 2023 is a good idea in theory. It aims to strike a balance between mild inconvenience for the sake of change and deliberate disruption going beyond sensibility. Articles 10 and 11 are qualified rights after all, meaning they can be restricted where it is necessary to do so. However, effective enforcement can only happen with education; it is essential that the police, courts and other authorities fully understand the limits of legislation, and their interplay with human rights. The definition of ‘serious disruption’ is incredibly broad, giving it greater potential to be improperly applied, and this must be addressed. Public disorder is an essential part of public order, and in my view deserves protection for the improvement of society as a whole.