Police to be given greater powers to restrict protests
Police are to be given greater powers to restrict protests by allowing them to consider the “cumulative impact” of repeated demonstrations.
The measures follow frequent pro-Palestinian demonstrations including an event in London on Saturday which saw almost 500 arrests.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said repeated large-scale protests had caused “considerable fear” for the Jewish community.
Conditions
The Government will amend Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to explicitly allow the police to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests on local areas in order to impose conditions on public processions and assemblies.
The Home Secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure powers are sufficient and are being applied consistently by police forces – this will include powers to ban protests outright.
She said: “The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country.
“However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.
“Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes.
“This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.
“These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country.”
Restraint
Saturday’s event in London took place despite calls for restraint following the synagogue attack in Manchester.
Almost 500 people were arrested, including 488 arrests for supporting banned terror organisation Palestine Action.
The organiser of the protest, Defend Our Juries, said it would carry out a “major escalation” in response to Ms Mahmood’s new policy and the ban on Palestine Action.
A Defend Our Juries spokesman said: “The Home Secretary’s extraordinary new affront to our democracy will only fuel the growing backlash to the ban.
“We are announcing a major escalation in the lead-up to the High Court challenge to the ban in November and we urge all of our supporters to sign up to show we will not stand by as our fundamental rights are stripped away.”
There is currently a high bar restricting police’s ability to ban a march entirely. It requires a risk of “serious public disorder”.
Repeated disorder
Under the changes being proposed, if a protest has taken place at the same site for weeks on end and caused repeated disorder, the police will have the authority to impose conditions such as ordering organisers to hold the event somewhere else.
Anyone who breaches the conditions will risk arrest and prosecution.
Ms Mahmood wrote to chief constables on Sunday, thanking them for their swift and professional response following Thursday’s attack at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall, Manchester, and at protests across the country.
She encouraged them to use the full range of powers available to them to prevent and respond to public disorder.
She told them: “The right to peaceful protest is a vital part of our democracy. It is a long-standing tradition in the UK that people are free to gather and express their views.
“However, the public rightly demands a firm and visible policing response where protest activity seek to cause serious disruption, intimidate others or is intent on breaking the law.”
Protection
Local Government Secretary Steve Reed has written to councils encouraging them to use their existing resources and powers to ensure Jewish communities are protected in the coming days and weeks, including limiting protest activity as much as possible.
All police forces in England and Wales are working with the Community Security Trust charity to offer additional support to the 538 different synagogues and Jewish community sites across the country.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a statement: “We welcome the Government’s decision to move ahead on giving police new powers around ‘cumulative impact’ in response to the deeply irresponsible and offensive protests we have seen in recent days following the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation.
“We have been calling for this for many months, and it was one of our key asks in the meeting with the Prime Minister and Home Secretary on Friday.
“We will work with the Government to ensure that these and other measures are as effective as possible in protecting our community.”
But Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson said: “People spreading antisemitic hate and inciting violence against Jews are getting away with it, and we fear the Government’s approach will do nothing to tackle that while undermining the fundamental right to peaceful protest.”
Liberty’s director Akiko Hart said: “The police already have immense powers to restrict protests – handing them even more would undermine our rights further while failing to keep people safe from violence like the horrific and heart-breaking antisemitic attack in Manchester.”
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They say protests cause fear.
But fear is not in the chants—it’s in the silence that follows the drone strike.
While peaceful dissent is criminalized, arms deals are sanitized.
Sixty thousand lives—mostly civilians, many children—reduced to collateral,
While the government polishes its moral outrage at placards and sit-ins.
The long time ago freedom championing Labour party has under Starmer become travesty of what it once was. Shabana Mahmood’s authoritarian, regressive, reactionary, Tory, mindsets are frightening…
Palestine Action is not a terror organisation.
If Suffragettes in the early 20 century and Greenham Common women in the 80’s had not demonstrated constantly over a long period of time , combined with direction action and imprisonment , how long would it have taken to be successful in their endeavours ?
It appears to be very subjective matter.
What constitutes the word “frequency” of demonstrations in a given period of time ?
How can anyone be half a brain compare a protest march to an actual terrorist incident? The protestors are protesting against death, terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Now they are also protesting against a curtail on a reasonable freedom to speak and express ourselves. How is asking our government to condemn the genocide and ethnic cleansing of a semitic Palestinian population antisemitic?
This is beyond disgusting,UK now a Police State courtesy of a junta running this Country.
Astonishing that the current Labour government is seeking to strengthen the Public Order Act 1986, the sections which were included by Thatcher to counter the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common. If there are any members of supporters of the Labour Party in Wales left, they will shudder at the thought.
They are labour in name only (LINO); in reality they are merely another neo-liberal rabble.
As somebody who dos not ‘get’ religion, I find it hard to understand why anybody would carry out an atrocity like the Manchester attack. British people living in the UK who happen to have the same religious orientation as the Zionist Regime in Israel/Palestine are not in any way contributing to the genocide. Attacking them is pointless. I would assume (based on no evidence) that the anti-genocide demonstrations include lots of folk who follow Judaism. Perhaps the Media need to give more prominence to them and thus show that following Judaism is not about supporting Netanyahu’s Greater Israel programme. If… Read more »