A comedian once said that if the people you are protesting against are happy with your protest method, then you’re not protesting, you’re just having a shit day out. I’m inclined to agree with him. All the legislation brought in regarding protests is to make your protest acceptable to those you are protesting against. In other words, turning your protest into a shit afternoon out. The establishment would be happy with you quietly, in limited numbers, marching from A to B, of course you will achieve nothing. That is the aim of this new legislation being introduced by bumbling Boris’s gang. Giving you the right to protest as long as you don’t upset, inconvenience or annoy anybody, do it quietly, when and where the police tell you and in numbers decided by the police. Their vision of tomorrow’s protests is groups of six or so people walking quietly and sedately, saying excuse me to everybody they pass, this will be permitted for approximately 15 minutes, then you will be asked to disperse or face the heavy hand of the law. The new democracy fit for a fascist state.
The following is an extract from an article by Adrian Kreutz published in Roar Magazine.
London — 1936. In what we know today as the “Battle of Cable Street,” the Metropolitan Police protected Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists against almost 20,000 anti-fascist protesters, including socialist groups, Irish dockworkers, British Jewry and anarchist and trade unionist groups. That day, 3,000 paramilitary “Blackshirts” marched through a Jewish neighborhood. Mounted police charged at a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, and many of the arrested reported violent treatment at the hands of the police.
Following the events on Cable Street, the Public Order Act of 1936 forced organizers of large protests to obtain prior police permission and gave the police broad powers to arrest people for “insulting or abusive” speech. The ambiguity of the word “insulting” meant that the Public Order Act could be applied in a range of cases.
London — 2021. Social movements protesting for racial and environmental justice disrupt public transport, deface the statues of slave traders, spread banners over Westminster Bridge and block the entrance to parliament. In response, the Johnson administration proposes the “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill,” popularly know as the “Crackdown Bill” or “Protest Bill.” It fits the draconian script of recent years — the concentration of power, the limiting of government accountability and multi-pronged attacks on human rights.
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