#KillTheBill: UK Anti-protest Bill is the ‘most significant threat to our freedom of speech in decades’, say lawyers

Grassroots
Written By Andrew Gough
 

The UK’s police, crime, sentencing and courts bill has passed its first vote in the House of Commons, bringing us closer to a series of legislative changes that could see sentences of up to ten years handed out simply for causing ‘serious’ inconvenience and annoyance. The possible implications for animal rights activists and campaigners are grave - this is what you can do today to #KillTheBill.

The Metropolitan Police’s disgraceful handling of the Sarah Everard vigil on Clapham Common on Saturday has fuelled opposition to a controversial bill that if passed into law could give the police and Home Office new discretionary powers aimed at curbing protests, enforced by disproportionate prison sentences of up to ten years.

MPs last night voted the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill through its ‘second reading’ in the House of Commons by 359 votes to 263, mostly backed by the Conservatives with Labour voting against. The passing of this first political hurdle takes us one step closer to clauses that would effectively amend the Public Order Act and discourage demonstrations that we as activists have almost taken for granted. Gone could be the days of animal rights marches through the streets of London and fur protests outside retailers, not without risking decade-long incarceration.

The wording of the bill as it stands is terrifyingly vague, convicting people of the crime of causing “serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity”. It would therefore be at the discretion of the police and Home Office to judge what “serious” might be when enforcing these powers, making arrests and pushing for convictions for a broad range of otherwise peaceful activities.

Inconvenience and loss of amenity - in other words the ability to go about one’s usual business - are cornerstones of many if not all protests based on civil disobedience, even the ones most would consider peaceful. The targets of the bill are obvious, with home secretary Priti Patel on record as describing Extinction Rebellion activists as “so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals” and the BLM protests as “dreadful”. Despite XR basing their protests on principles of nonviolent civil disobedience while BLM demos have been characterised by destruction of property, the new bill would give Patel and the police on-the-spot powers to raise or lower the test for what constitutes seriousness. In their words, justified by their duty to “balance the rights of protesters with the rights of others to go about their business unhindered”.

It is still too early to say for sure what the implications for animal rights activists and campaigners could be, but as it stands, the wording of the bill could see the new laws applied to any public processions and assemblies that impact the general public and businesses. Obvious examples would be Animal Rebellion’s demonstrations that when conducted as part of the broader Extinction Rebellion ‘uprisings’ in London and other major cities were highly disruptive, blocking off roads and locking on to the gates of slaughterhouses and fish markets. However, the bill also includes ‘single-person protests’, meaning that just one person could end up in prison for speaking their mind a little too loudly.

The bill would allow police to impose the same conditions on static protests as they do on public processions, or marches, such as start and finish times and maximum noise levels, and like with marches simply refuse to allow them if they judge conditions to not be enough to allow the public to go about their business as usual.

When it comes to the regular weekly activities of many animal rights grassroots groups - such as street outreach showing graphic footage, slaughterhouse vigils and hunt sabbing - all of these have at some point been scrutinised by police through the lens of the Public Order Act 1986, in particular, whether they cause “harassment, alarm or distress" (Section 5). Dispersal orders, justified in the name of public order, have been issued at vigils and arrests made, telling us that the police are not above using their discretion or personal bias to interpret laws harshly on the spot and leave it to the courts to rule otherwise.

According to legal experts at Kellys Solicitors, who specialise in defending protestors, “one of the most eye-catching parts of the Bill are clauses which seek to amend the Public Order Act 1986 in relation to public processions and public assemblies.”

“These definitions are incredibly broad in their scope, and open to misinterpretation by the police,” said Hollie Collinge of Kellys Solicitors, in an email to Surge. “As far as where marches can take place in London, there are clauses which expand the area around Parliament where particular activities cannot take place. This creates another hurdle to those seeking to protest at a location which is integral to the message.”

Lydia Dagostino, director of Kellys Solicitors, called the bill the “most significant threat to our freedom of speech and the right to protest in decades.”

“It is being rushed through during the pandemic and is clearly targeting peaceful campaigners. The threshold of criminality will be lowered. So the bottom line is that if the legislation is passed in its present form, there will be more convictions and harsher penalties.”

However, many MPs who backed the bill last night have also stated that it would not pass without significant caveats. 

Rob Roberts, the MP for Delyn in north Wales, supported the bill but had reservations regarding the aspects of it relating to protests, expecting them to change later in the Commons process. 

“I’m not going to pretend that this is a perfect bill,” said Roberts, reported in the Guardian. “I sympathise with some of the concerns that have been raised about provisions that refer to protest. I’m sure that in committee these provisions will be carefully considered and scrutinised.”

Further, it isn’t clear whether the bill contradicts the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Article 11 of which guarantees our right to freedom of assembly and association. While the UK is no longer part of the EU thanks to Brexit, the ECHR is not dependent on EU membership and is in fact a treaty that dates back to the Council of Europe in 1950, of which the UK is a signatory. As such, the ECHR still applies via the Human Rights Act (HRA) that allows people to defend in UK courts rights guaranteed by the Convention.

“While it’s not a direct attempt to prevent protest - which remains a fundamental right under the ECHR, and must be given meaningful effect - this Bill is designed to deter people at a time when there are perfectly sufficient powers in existence which have used to good effect over the past few days to stifle peaceful protest,” added the solicitors at Kellys.

There is no guarantee that the ECHR can protect protestors going forward, as there has always been a balance between European convention and sovereign UK law, something that the Conservatives have long sought to address post-Brexit by repealing the HRA. However, as it stands there is a significant body of case-law and precedent when it comes to the application of the Convention in defense of protestors in countries such as Russia, Denmark, Lithuania, Moldova and the UK where European courts declared domestic rulings incompatible with the ECHR:

However, a declaration does not ‘strike out’ that piece of law. It merely informs the UK that the law needs to change – and most of the time, the UK Government and Parliament will then seek to amend the law. But, ultimately, Westminster is considered sovereign and cannot be forced to change its laws. The UK’s unwillingness to implement a judgment from Strasbourg was seen recently when its policy on sensitive data retention was deemed incompatible with ECHR rights, as was its blanket ban on prisoner voting rights. (Source: Unlockthelaw.co.uk)

Regardless of the legal intricacies, it is clear that the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill cannot pass into law in its current form, or indeed at all. Our right to protest may not be an absolute right in the eyes of the UK government due to what it says is its duty to also protect the general public, but it is a fundamental right nonetheless.

You must act now to ‘kill the bill’. Already this week we have seen people take to the streets of London, Manchester and other cities to protest for their right to protest. Even the most conservative reader must understand the importance of protest in preventing totalitarianism and government overreach into our lives. Where would we as a society be without historical acts of dissension against the state, and where would animal rights be without marches, demonstrations and other acts of civil disobedience.

Here is what you can do:

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager at Surge.

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