It does the police no good if officers are thought to be at the beck and call of politicians. Such a system, relying on policing by consent, would quickly lose the trust of the public. That is why Lord Denning, the most celebrated English judge of the 20th century, argued that the responsibility for law enforcement ought to lie solely with the police. In a now famous judgment, Denning wrote that the chief constable “is answerable to the law and to the law alone”. Yet when it comes to demonstrations it appears that instead of police proportionately applying the laws of the land, officers are being cowed into serving ministerial interests.
Deferring to the executive branch has seen officers forced to apologise over the arrests of six protesters on coronation day. The proximate cause of the mess was the Home Office’s decision to expedite new criminal offences to prevent disruption into law last week. This gave the police powers to arrest the leaders of an anti-monarchy group, Republic, for having equipment that “could have been used as part of a ‘lock on’-style protest”. These turned out to be straps used to transport placards and were about as dangerous as the yellow T-shirts protesters were wearing. The police, it seems, were more bothered about images of disruption of a “once in a generation event” than the disruption itself.
Police have to balance people’s right to peacefully express their views with disruption to the wider population. But today’s Conservative party seems to have no interest in dissent or respect for opposing views. It thinks anyone who does not share its views ought to be re-educated into submission. The government criticises repressive laws in dictatorships but is emulating them at home. At the weekend, police arrested volunteers for handing out rape alarms because they could cause a nuisance, which was deemed more of an issue than protecting women in vulnerable situations. Also arrested was a journalist covering the protests, despite the law saying reporters and observers would be exempt.
We have already had judges labelled as “enemies of the people”, seen the vilification of “lefty lawyers”, and now there is blatant political intimidation of the police. This was typified by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, preposterously suggesting that the police backed Just Stop Oil protests. Freedom of expression – and freedom of assembly – are the cornerstones of British democracy. These liberties should be protected, however inconvenient it might seem, so that individuals can calmly differ.
Public officials ought to be accountable to the public in some form. In England and Wales that is through either mayors or police and crime commissioners. But neither are empowered to tamper with the operational independence of the police. Ms Braverman, like her predecessor, Priti Patel, has such a different view of constitutional conventions that Sue Sim, a former chief constable and national policing lead for public order, warned at the weekend that the country risked becoming a “totalitarian police state”.
Ministers need to listen to what protesters are saying, rather than criminalising them for saying it. Last year, the Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti noted that the home secretary had been rescued from oblivion by Rishi Sunak after pleading “redemption for herself but incarceration for those who plead for the planet, against poverty, and even for free speech itself”. The instinct of a dictator is to lock up those who disagree. Britain’s democracy should be nowhere near this kind of approach.
