• Contact
  • About
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
East Anglia Bylines
  • HOME
  • News
    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Politics Blog
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
  • Series
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • News
    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Politics Blog
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
  • Series
No Result
View All Result
East Anglia Bylines

The policing bill is a serious threat to the right to protest

New amendments added to the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill could be used to criminalise any protest. Time is running out to stop it.

Cameron HollowaybyCameron Holloway
December 8, 2021
in Politics, UK
Reading Time: 6 mins
A A
The policing bill

Kill the Bill protest against the PCSC policing bill. Protests like this could effectively become illegal. Photo by Steve Easton via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Today, Wednesday 8 December, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill will enter the Report Stage in the House of Lords. Behind this seemingly mundane fact lies a shocking truth — we are very close to the introduction of an effective ban on protest in the United Kingdom.

The PCSC Bill has other serious flaws, not least the expansion of stop and search powers and the effective outlawing of many Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people’s way of life. But it is the laws relating to protest that could have the most damaging and far-reaching effects.

The story so far

The bill’s provisions were already egregious when it was first introduced to the Commons in March — including allowing police to shut down any protest deemed to be causing ‘serious unease, alarm or distress’. The proposed new powers attracted significant media attention in the wake of brutal policing of a peaceful vigil for Sarah Everard in March, forcing the Government to delay the legislation. But before long it was back in the Commons, prompting a wave of protests under the moniker ‘Kill the Bill’.

Since its passage to the Lords, the bill has become even more restrictive, with pages on pages of amendments quietly added in the last few weeks. Leading barrister and author Chris Daw QC says the bill is “completely contradictory to everything the liberty of the free citizen is about in Britain”, while Norwich South MP Clive Lewis warned, even before the latest changes to the legislation, that “democracy is being swept away, in a calculated programme to leave the public muted and powerless.”

New amendments

The new amendments include:

  • A new Serious Disruption Order, which can ban named individuals from protesting and impose significant limits on their freedom, even if they have not committed an offence. The Government has indicated that Serious Disruption Orders are intended ‘to tackle protesters who are determined to repeatedly cause disruption to the public’. While their press release focuses on ‘protesters determined to lock or glue themselves onto structures’, the bill is drafted in such a way that these could be handed to anyone attending, or indeed encouraging others to attend, a protest. 
  • Up to a 51-week prison sentence for locking onto, or holding onto ‘a person, to an object or to land’. The wording of the bill is so loose that protestors could conceivably be imprisoned for linking arms.
  • Obstruction of a highway or of ‘major transport works’ is criminalised, again with a potential prison sentence of up to 51 weeks, seemingly taking direct aim at the tactics of groups such as Extinction Rebellion.

Campaigners fear that it may now be difficult to attend any protest without committing an offence. 

Can it be stopped?

As Camilla Cavendish and David Hencke have pointed out, the manner in which these new amendments have been added conforms to an established pattern of bypassing Parliamentary scrutiny, a practice that a recent House of Lords report calls ‘Government by Diktat’.

However, the report stage of a bill allows members of the House of Lords time for detailed scrutiny of new amendments. Votes can also be taken on any of these amendments. ​​If the Lords disagrees with any Commons amendments, or makes alternative proposals, then the bill can be sent back to the House of Commons. It can then go back and forth between the two houses until agreement is reached. It is therefore possible that the House of Lords could delay the passage of the bill. 

Across the country, there is growing opposition to the Government’s draconian proposals. Protests are planned for London, Cambridge, Birmingham and other cities on Wednesday evening, while over 70,000 people have supported campaign group Liberty’s latest petition to stop the bill (a previous iteration received over 700,000 signatures).

Unrest in East Anglia

Recent months have seen growing unrest across East Anglia, with groups springing up across the region to campaign on a wide variety of issues. One impromptu grouping came together after their email addresses were accidentally shared with each other by South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon. Under the PCSC Bill’s proposals, these campaigners would all risk prison.

Now is perhaps a good time to recall the words of David Boyd, UN special rapporteur for human rights and the environment, in June: “There will have to be a backlash. If people see the UK government as increasingly repressive, at some point they will throw it out. These actions are counterproductive — we saw this in the US, where a terrible, repressive government has been replaced with an administration that in many ways is pro-human rights and pro-sustainability.”

Boris Johnson has repeatedly shown that he will bow to public pressure, but time is running out for people in the United Kingdom to protect their fundamental freedom to protest.

University staff strike
Anglia

University and college staff call for fairer pay, pensions and working conditions during three-day strike

December 4, 2021
Remote_working
Business

Remote working and the disappearance of private space

November 26, 2021
Tags: Activism
Previous Post

What do we do about the unvaccinated?

Next Post

Five reasons to be afraid

Cameron Holloway

Cameron Holloway

Cameron is a Cambridge City Councillor with the Labour Party. He works in prison education, and is committed to tackling social inequality. In his free time, he enjoys reading, writing and running. Cameron is a member of the EAB editorial team.

Related Posts

Demonstration in front of the Home Office by the organisation Global Justice Now in 2018 against the hostile environment. A group of people are holding a long banner that says 'End the hostile environment'.
Activism

Migrants organise to beat ‘hostile environment’

byMariam Yusuf
November 28, 2023
Original Gladstone Budget box
Business

Tories sink the economy while Labour’s response is dismal

byProf Richard Murphy
November 28, 2023
Geert Wilders smiling in a crowd
Democracy

Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right

byAurelien Mondon
November 27, 2023
Photo of a the Chancellor's red budget case and a folder titled: "Autumn statement 2023"
Economics

Chancellor’s pre-election giveaways leave households £1,900 poorer

byEast Anglia Bylinesand1 others
November 23, 2023
Politics blog logo showing a fish-eye view of the Houses of Parliament.
Democracy

Politics Blog

byEast Anglia Bylines
November 21, 2023
Next Post
Cressida Dick failed to resign

Five reasons to be afraid

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR CROWDFUNDER

Subscribe to our newsletters
CHOOSE YOUR NEWS
Follow us on social media
CHOOSE YOUR PLATFORMS
Download our app
ALL OF BYLINES IN ONE PLACE
Subscribe to our gazette
CONTRIBUTE TO OUR SUSTAINABILITY
Make a monthly or one-off donation
DONATE NOW
Help us with our hosting costs
SIGN UP TO SITEGROUND
We are always looking for citizen journalists
WRITE FOR US
Volunteer as an editor, in a technical role, or on social media
VOLUNTEER FOR US
Something else?
GET IN TOUCH
Previous slide
Next slide

LATEST

A Rwanda female nurse injecting a covi19 vaccine jab.

How Big Pharma is destroying global health

November 29, 2023
Artificial intelligence graphic

Artificial Intelligence in the newsroom: do we trust it?

November 29, 2023
Demonstration in front of the Home Office by the organisation Global Justice Now in 2018 against the hostile environment. A group of people are holding a long banner that says 'End the hostile environment'.

Migrants organise to beat ‘hostile environment’

November 28, 2023
Original Gladstone Budget box

Tories sink the economy while Labour’s response is dismal

November 28, 2023
Woman with hand held up to signify "stop"

Norwich Women’s Rights: urgent action needed

November 27, 2023
Geert Wilders smiling in a crowd

Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right

November 27, 2023

MOST READ

Looking across Norwich Market towards the Norman Norwich Castle.

UK is always in our hearts, but it’s difficult to live there

November 24, 2023
Solar powered device that produces clean water and hydrogen. It's pictured on the deck of a punt on the river Cam, with St John's College's Bridge of Sighs in the background.

New floating device cleans water and produces hydrogen

November 22, 2023
Wine, cheese and bread at a street café in Paris

Wine, the pint bottle and European standards

November 23, 2023
Man reading a phone in bed

7.02: your first WhatsApp of the day…it’s AI wanting a word

November 24, 2023

Tags

Activism Anglian Water Brexit Business Cartoons Climate Community Conservatives COP26 Crime Democracy Economics Economy Elections Environment EU Farming Government Health History International Women's Day Labour Law Letters Local elections 2023 Net zero NHS Norwich Opinion Our place in Europe Pandemic Party politics Pecksniff Politics Poverty Sewage Social care Tax Trade Ukraine VAWG Wealth Welfare Wildlife Women
East Anglia Bylines

We are a not-for-profit citizen journalism publication. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in East Anglia and beyond.

East Anglia Bylines is a trading brand of Bylines Network Limited, which is a partner organisation to Byline Times.

Learn more about us

No Result
View All Result
  • About
  • Authors
  • Complaints
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Letters
  • Privacy
  • Network Map
  • Network RSS Feeds
  • Submission Guidelines

© 2023 East Anglia Bylines. Powerful Citizen Journalism

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • News
    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Politics Blog
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
  • Series

Newsletter sign up

DONATE

© 2023 East Anglia Bylines. Powerful Citizen Journalism

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In