Those with power rarely give it up willingly. That's why protest matters. It's how we won workers' rights, women's rights, gay rights, and have fought inequality in so many forms. But today, new laws are making protest harder in the UK. It's time to be louder.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
This week has been a bad week for everybody who believes in the right to protest, and I do believe in the right to protest.
I do so for one very good and very simple reason.
Change has never happened by itself.
Change has always needed to be demanded, and almost always, protest has been part of creating the environment in which change can take place.
Those with power rarely want to give it up willingly, and that's why protest matters.
Protest has changed things.
It ended slavery in this country and eventually around the world in various ways.
Votes for working men and then women happened because of protest, sometimes decidedly rowdy and even violent on occasions, which people would like to forget now, particularly modern politicians, but they shouldn't.
Workers' rights and unions happened because of protests.
Women's rights were created by protest.
Apartheid was challenged by protest.
Climate strikes have an impact.
Gay rights, anti-prejuduce laws, and so much else. All of this was created by protest.
Protest is not a privilege; let's be clear about this, protest is a right protected under international law. The UN Declaration of Human Rights, which the UK helped draft and which was adopted by around 70 countries in 1948, and now by the signatories to the UN as a whole, recognises that there is a right to freedom of opinion and expression.
That's in Article 19 of that declaration, and Article 20 gives a right to the freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
In other words, we have a right to our opinion, we have a right to say it in whatever way we wish, and we have a right to assemble together and tell the world that we are unhappy.
These are internationally respected human rights, but they're also part of UK law. The European Convention on Human Rights, obviously based upon the UN Declaration, was signed in 1950, and it eventually made its way into UK law after considerable hesitation on the part of Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997, in 1998.
It was a Labour government that enacted our human rights laws, and the Human Rights Act gives us the right to freedom of expression, and a right of free assembly and association.
In other words, those rights that we got in international law in 1948 were enshrined in UK law in 1998.
We have a right to protest, but this is now being challenged around the globe and in the UK.
We now need police consent to protest.
We are not allowed to make too much noise, and if we do, we can be arrested.
We are apparently only allowed to protest so long as we don't upset anybody, but that's the whole point of protest; without upsetting someone, nothing has ever changed.
New laws make it hard to march, strike or even gather. Just walking slowly down the road can be an offence now.
Those in power are living in fear of protest because they know it works . This protest requires that noise be made. Noise in all sorts of forms. In writing, in public, on video, and in the media, and it should be noticed because the fact that we need to protest is because issues are being hidden. Hidden by our media in far too many cases and without protest, injustice therefore continues.
So, without protest, there is no pressure on those in power to act, and this is an essential part of democracy.
Democracy is not just about voting every few years. It's about empowering citizens to hold power to account. And protest is one of the highest forms of democratic participation there is, because it asks the question, 'What are you going to do about this, which is wrong?'
We have the right to ask that question.
When parliament is challenging, that when it is trying to treat people as being outside the law because they're asking reasonable questions, then there's something wrong with our democracy.
We need to protest, because we need change.
There has never been a major advance without protest.
We must defend the right to speak out.
We must demand better, and in the last week, all these rights have gone backwards.
So we might need to be noisier still in the future.
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Control. It is about control of narratives & thus thought. Demos, by definition offer an uncontrolled narrative.
I have a sense that the rise of social media (a soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation?) corresponds with the rise of control with respect to physical protest.
Each & every gov, Underpants-man, B.Liar, Moron, Zionist have sought to impose more restrictions on demos – but as tech has improved it makes it easier to show what is going on @ a demo.
Under Underpants-man, if you wanted a vid of a demo you watched the news – assuming the broadcasters could be arsed to show it & if they did the narrative would often focus on the bad things the demonstrators did. Now – no control on the medai – so – control the action – the demo.
Meanwhile the main stream media (once upon a time neutralish) now portrays all demonstrators as maniacs of various sorts ( e.g. those demonstrating in support of Palestine quite clearly eat jewish babies for breakfast – and for the benefit of the imbeciles that visit this blog – that was irony btw).
We need a change of gov & a commitment to revoke every single law on protest implemented since 1990s by the assorted scum listed above, who have exactly zero interest in democracy and total interest in control – control of UK serfs – ……how dare you show public discontent with respect to your political betters – and if you lot want a change of gov, well there are various parties you can vote for – that they offer all the same policies is irrelevant.
The evidence of history is very clear: protest works – and it seems that disruptive, even violent protest, works best. Take the Suffragettes. They were a radical faction in a much broader movement, much of which advocated non-disruptive, lawful actions. But it is the Suffragettes we remember nowadays, and who we thank for women’s votes.
It seems to me this is true more or less wherever we look in history. If you’re in the labour movement, you know about the arrested and deported Tolpuddle Martyrs, but have you heard of the early trade union pioneers that were (generally) law-abiding – Joseph Arch, for example?
Recent studies of the abolition of slavery have moved from seeing it as a peaceful parliamentary achievement to the fact that the cost of slave rebellions and other economic pressures had already made it unviable – and we celebrate now the disruptive protests led by more recent black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (whose defense of the use of violence was precisely what got him jailed). Gandhi famously advocated non-violence – but led extremely disruptive protests. The fact is, they work.
My wife and I are regular contributors to Greenpeace, who for decades have used direct action, to the tune of many millions of pounds against those they see as the major polluters of our planet. Greenpeace make the activities of Palestine Action seem like a teddy bears picnic. Can we now expect a knock on the door as sponsors of terrorism I wonder.
My personal view on this is that as long as the rich continue to get their hands on our democracy, society’s capacity to protest will be hindered by their desire to privatise everything and have the last say.
This government has an authoritarian streak and a sense of its own righteousness that closely resembles the Blair government’s attitude to public protest and dissent.
“anti-equality laws” ?
Edited.
2 million people protesting against the Iraq war made no ta jot of difference but some people painting an RAF plane got huge attention and the authorities were rattled. Similarly when the bridges of London and the M25 were blocked by climate protests. it seems now that protest must be stepped up to get change and people prepared to go to prison..
I thought it relevant to share this impassioned speech by Bruce Springsteen and his moving rendition of “My City of Ruins” at his concert in Milan – and doubtless the other venues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZcGkVwFrc&list=RDs-ZcGkVwFrc&start_radio=1
As the lyrics say “Come on, rise up”!!
A moving and uplifting moment …..I wish I’d been there.
On the blog in the morning….
Thank you
https://leftfootforward.org/2025/07/palestine-action-lose-court-battle-to-temporarily-block-proscription-as-terrorist-group/
Wait for the knock on your door!
Worth a read:
“Is the U.K. officially a dictatorship?” on Thinking Coalition’s Substack (1 Jul 2025)
https://thinkingcoalition.substack.com/p/is-the-uk-officially-a-dictatorship
And apparently the UK is no longer a country of free speech.
See The Global Expression report: https://www.globalexpressionreport.org/
Thanks
I may post that (depedning on time)