In Britain, protest is no longer a right. Instead, it is a privilege that is granted – or withheld – at the whim of those in power. This is the implication of new rules that the Labour government is proposing, which would dictate the time and place that protests are permitted to occur, and carry the risk of prison time for those who defy orders. Successive governments had already chipped away at this right: the last Conservative administration granted the police sweeping new powers, which the United Nations’ human rights chief condemned as “serious and undue restrictions” on democratic freedoms. Taken together, these incremental assaults on freedom have effectively abolished the hard-won right to freedom of protest.
The latest assault is justified by last week’s heinous antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Manchester. There should be universal agreement that the security of British Jews must be protected. Using this atrocity as a justification to throttle dissent is not only unrelated to that duty, but perverts it. Consider Britain’s history of protest and direct action against racism and fascism, from the battle of Cable Street in 1936, to postwar Jewish anti-fascist movements such as the 43 or 62 Group, or the mobilisations against the National Front in the 1970s. Many of these protesters were derided as extremists in their day, even while they were fighting for the rights of minorities.
