steelnomad

2021-08-19 00:57:19

News from the UK: The Police Bill is a threat to us all

The proposed #Police, #Crime, #Sentencing and #Courts Bill - known as the #PoliceBill for short - applies #militaristic practices of #control and #coercion to restrict the everyday #exercise of #peaceful #protest and #political activity in the #UK. It is an example of everyday #militarism.
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What's in the bill?

The bill will vastly increase the police's powers to close down #protests – with very little reason. The reasons that the bill will allow police to give for stopping protests are subjective and vaguely worded.

Clauses 54 and 55 of the bill will allow the #police to restrict or stop a protest if they believe that it may “result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried out in the vicinity” or “have a significant or relevant impact on persons in the vicinity” such as by causing them “serious unease, alarm or distress”. Such vague justifications could be used, for example, to prevent people protesting against an #arms fair on the grounds that the protest causes “alarm” to the arms dealers. (This legislation is not needed to prevent people from intimidating others, which is already covered by other laws).

Provisions in Clauses 54 and 55 will allow police to restrict protests on grounds of the noise generated. This could be used against almost any protest that is not a silent vigil. As the human rights organisation #Liberty put it, “The noise protests generate may simply be a product of the number of people who assemble”. David Mead, a professor of law, says that this provision is an “existential threat to protest, so closely entangled are protests with noise”.

Clause 56 will make it a #criminal offence for a peaceful #protester to break conditions that police have imposed on a protest, even if the protester did not know that the conditions were in place, if a court decides that they “ought to have known”. This could effectively criminalise someone for not knowing something.

Clause 57 imposes new #restrictions on protests near #Parliament. The organisation Liberty suggests that these rules are so strict they would even criminalise homeless people who are sleeping rough not far from Parliament. Being able to protest in the place where laws are made is crucial in a #free and #democratic #society.

Clause 58 will give the Home Secretary the power to restrict #protests in other places comparable to the new restrictions on protests near Parliament, by designating them as “controlled areas”. The Peace Pledge Union fears that this power could be used to stop protests outside major events such as conferences, international summits, political meetings, arms fairs, royal events or almost any place in which protests are planned. This provision thus comes close to allowing the Home Secretary to ban protests at will.

Clause 59 creates a new offence of protesting in a way that causes “serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity” or even risks causing these things. This is vague in the extreme. It has been suggested that it may be used against people #peacefully hanging banners from bridges. As the Court of Appeal ruled in 2009, “Rights worth having are unruly things. Demonstrations and protests are liable to be a nuisance. They are likely to be inconvenient and tiresome, at least perceived as such by others who are out of sympathy with them.”

Clause 60 allows police to impose conditions on protests even when a protest involves one person only. This has never before been the case.

Clause 61 will turn trespass into a criminal matter rather than a civil one. This is likely to have serious negative consequences for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller #communities, who maintain that the bill is strongly biased against them. It is also likely to be used to #suppress and prevent protest camps, which currently are generally dealt with under civil law. Protest camps have been a major part of political activity in the UK for decades, particularly in the #peace movement and most famously at Greenham Common. As Friends of the Earth point out, were it not for protest camps against fracking, the UK's shift away from fracking may not have occurred. Liberty suggest that this clause could be used to criminalise striking workers peacefully picketing outside their workplace. The Peace Pledge Union fears that it could also be used by police to #arrest people #demonstrating peacefully outside #military bases or the offices of arms companies.

#CivilRights #CivilLiberties #PoliceState #HumanRights

The Police Bill: Why the Peace Pledge Union objects

The Police Bill is a threat to us allThe proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill - known as the Police Bill for short - applies militaristic practices of control and coercion to restrict the everyday exercise of peaceful protest and politi…

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