As the Guardian reports this morning:
Protesters who wear masks could face arrest, up to a month in jail and a £1,000 fine under proposed measures that human rights campaigners claim are pandering to “culture war nonsense”.
The Guardian adds:
Demonstrators will no longer be able to use the right to protest as a reasonable excuse if they commit public order offences such as serious disruption.
Right in front of our eyes, our basic human rights, including the right to offer a defence in court, are being destroyed, and Labour stands aside and lets all this happen as another sure sign that they are both LINO (Labour In Name Only) and the TCP (Tory Continuity Party).
I am sickened, as well as profoundly worried.
When do we admit that we live in a state where the rule of law no longer applies? It has to be soon if it has not already happened.
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What occurs to me is that this is just another stage in a long standing plan to dis-enfranchise citizens of their right to disagree with the executive. It is another nail in the coffin of civil society as I don’t see much advice about how to use civil society to take the fight there.
If you take this alongside the recent rules being relaxed on political party funding it is clear who has the ear of government.
Those who pay for the privilege.
And so, another one of Margaret Hilda Thatcher’s chickens comes home to roost.
The ‘enemy within’ is the vested interests of capital and the cabal of rich people she helped to create – not the loony left.
Linking to Richard’s previous post ‘Labour abandons hope’ and the discussion about voting, many young people (under 25) I speak with feel completely disenfranchised and have taken the conscious decision not to vote in the general election. This is not a ‘can’t be bothered’ stance, they are all politically engaged – including going on demonstrations and striking and being union members. It is a protest vote because they don’t accept the current political FPTP system. It demonstrably doesn’t work for them, so they choose to stand outside it. It’s anecdotal, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the actual voter turnout is very, very low. Meaning a marked lack of confidence in any government.
It’s like a bloodless revolution brewing.
First they came for the Socialists…
Nope, they’ve gone already.
Maybe Labour are thinking, ‘If we get into office, actually, this piece of legislation could come in useful when the public protest realising what a bunch of no-good Tories we are’?
Never forget the experience of the peaceful protester Walter Wolfgang, a Jewish refugee from Nazi ideology, detained under counter-terrorism laws for shouting ‘Nonsense!’ at Jack Straw. It’s what happens for speaking truth to power.
I think you are right Peter
Staggeringly, this new law wears making a mask because you fear Covid a crime in some situations
It would almost be worth getting arrested for mask-wearing and testing that as a legal defence.
Do you support public order offences that cause serious disruption?
I support the right to protest
It is a basic human right that we signed up to when creating the UN and have since abandoned
Why don’t you support this democratic right, and the right to explain the protest in court?
Hannah May
Do you support a law that makes criminals of people because of their principles? Principles that appear to be completely lacking in the ruling elite?
And yes, I absolutely do support protest that causes serious disruption. If there is no disruption the general public will see no protest.
Thank you
“Hard [i.e., exceptional] cases make bad law”.
This is an old proposition often used by lawyers. What it really means is – moral indignation makes bad law, and your comment is redolent of moral indignation. It is less clear whether you brought it with you, or not.
Disruption proportionate to the offending policy has a parallel in the use of proportionate force to resist an assault. In fact this country has NO history of serious disruption, and no justification for the escalation in the laws – go and live in France for a taste of routine serious disruption, “Hannah May”.
Should’ve said ‘no recent history’, not forgetting the Civil War and the odd Peasant or Miners revolt. Even the Miner’s Strike’ IMO was a relatively peaceful matter compared to French fun and games. – and that’s not me reading a book, I was there in the Notts and Leics coalfield area at the time.
And in the miners’ strike, the violence was generally manufactured by police action, kettling techniques, mounted police charges etc – see the Ch.4 documentary miniseries just broadcast.
I have already mentioned on a previpous blog that I passed through France on the Friday that everything escalated. Amusingly, I am now in Spain, where everything is escalating – for similar reasons (ditto, Italy, Belgium etc). The farmer protests are violent and the authorities are frightened – very frightened. In France the police did exactly zero. Some thought it was all a “bit of a larf”.
Organised, widespread violence against the state, works. The farmers in a number of countries have shown this to be the case, given the numerous “reverse ferrets” that assorted politicos from Von der Leyen to Macron have done.
Other groups (the right?) will taken note. Also of note: the Spanish gov is having great difficutly negotiating with the farmers – because the action of the frmers has nothing to do with the usual farming orgs (which for the most part represent the couple of thousand families that own more than 50% of Spain). In an ideal world peaceful demonstrations would be the way to get change. But govs pay no attention & as in the UK, implement laws to prevent such public spectacles. UK farmers are probably keeping their power dry for when LINO gets into power.
& for the avoidance of doubt – none of the above should be read as incitement to violence – I am merely observing that – given current political structures,- politicians have ensured that only violence/violent acts gets results.
People will need to be tried before they’re jailed, and given what the Tories have done to the judicial system, neither getting protestors before a court or jailing them will be easy to implement.
Demanding removal of face coverings facilitates the use of facial recognition, with fixed cameras and drones. Link that in real time to a database of ‘suspects’ or simply those with photo IDs – add powerful computing and you have target acquisition. For those on that side, an Orwellian state; for the rest, the anaesthetic Brave New World of docile consumerism.
I share your concerns and believe that it is already too late to easily pull back from being governed by a plutocrat’s autocracy in Great Britain.
I suffered persecution and continuing surveillance from the 1970s onwards for being actively interested in environmental and animal rights issues as well as what I realise now were democratic socialist beliefs. At the time, being a young teen from a broken but upper middle class family background I just believed them to be rooted in Christian teachings. My late father being an Episcopalian priest as well as being very open minded in his acceptance of all other global spiritual expressions. With hindsight, such strange tragedies haunted my in my family, probably on the Big Oil or US/UK corporate secret hit lists for being a potential socialist activist. Who will ever know the truth ?Accordingly, I have been both politically cowed and socially hyper vigilant my entire adult life. Getting too near death to care as much now with so few still to protect through remaining silent.
For those of you who may be in a more empowered position and temperament I strongly suggest that you look up and read the fine print of Patel’s 2021 Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021. It is shocking.
I think that I read somewhere that Scotland’s separate judiciary struck down the allowed use of sexualised violence by state agents against minors.
I do not know whether that will hold in an increasingly anti devolution centrist British state. Of course all of the new allowed criminal conduct of state agents in this Act have applied and still apply in Northern Ireland and have done for decades. The only thing that has come close to exposing this was the work of those legal teams supporting Troubles victims and survivors of which because of EU judicial oversight were beginning to gain traction. Hence the hurried passing of the crack handed anti human rights Northern Ireland Legacy Act last September and the subsequent necessity for Ireland to take the UK to court over this heinous attempt at covering up past state criminality.
As is being illustrated daily by the Trump court cases in the US, the only non violent way to counter such corruption in high places is through the judiciary. If that is hobbled, as this Brexit government is obviously attempting to achieve, the only other course of action open to law abiding citizens is to break their anti human rights laws.
UK government continues to chip away at everybody’s right to protest. This new anti-masking rule, if it’s not stopped, however, will disproportionally affect people who, due to their disability or health conditions (e.g. being immunocompromised are at particularly high clinical risk from Covid. Many of them will simply not be able to take part in demonstrations. It’s hugely discriminating as well as anti-democratic.
It is also anti-Islamic