The home secretary’s plans to allow the police to impose conditions on protests based on cumulative disruption are problematic in several ways (Civil liberty groups express concern over plan for more anti-protest powers, 5 October). Similar proposals were voted down by the House of Lords as a late amendment at report stage of the public order bill in January 2023. It is unlikely that their lordships will be any more welcoming of these plans this time.
First, the announcement came only a few days after the closure of an invitation-only consultation; the speed indicates an already made-up mind. Second, part of the case for expansion of powers is the need to deal with protests that intimidate local people in an area, yet the power to impose conditions on the basis of planned intimidation has existed in public order law since 1986.
There is also a raft of other provisions that already empower the police to regulate protests: those based on serious disruption to the local community, those based on significant noise, powers to disperse based on reasonable grounds to think that there will be harassment, alarm or distress, and powers to deal with individuals who incite hatred based on race or religion.
Lastly, as with all police discretionary powers, is the risk of overreach and of chilling the lawful speech of others. One real danger is that one protest group might be denied their rights because of the actions (say the previous day) of another group. That calls into question the individual nature of the right and the need for individualised assessment of risks and harms for restrictions to be proportionate.
Prof David Mead, Dr Suzanne Dixon, Dr Charmian Werren and Jack Jones
University of East Anglia Law School
I have thought deeply about Owen Jones’ article (It starts with Palestine protests. But where will the crackdown on Britain’s democratic freedoms end?, 6 October).
I was arrested on Saturday with hundreds of others at the Defend Our Juries action in Trafalgar Square, against genocide and the proscription of Palestine Action. It was also the 89th anniversary of the arrest of my father for being one of the organisers of the 1936 Cable Street resistance to the rise of fascism in Britain.
Besides the obligatory “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine action”, I carried an extra placard saying: “This Jew abhors the Gaza genocide and the Manchester synagogue attack.”
Calling opposition to genocide antisemitic is always ignorant and sometimes wicked. My willingness to fight antisemitism, seared into my soul as a child born three months before the liberation of Auschwitz, leads me to stand against emerging fascism, and the genocide that the far-right Israeli government has unleashed.
The same core ethics spur my horror at Israel’s apartheid regime, the brutal killings on 7 October 2023 and the indiscriminate and repeated massacres in the two years since.
My dad would have been horrified by the 13 September far-right rally in Westminster organised by Tommy Robinson and even more so by his subsequent invitation to Israel as a heroic defender of Jews, by a Likud minister. This has been opposed even by the staunchly Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews.
The vast majority of those who march to oppose genocide or act against it oppose all racism. There is work to be done replacing a government that partners genocide and suppresses protest, not with the repressive Faragist right, but a progressive movement demanding justice and promoting peace.
Prof Tony Booth
Cambridge
Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
