Author Archives: James Gant

Last week, some 474 people were arrested at a London protest for expressing support for the newly-proscribed Palestine Action; per the Terrorism Act 2000, this can carry a sentence of up to fourteen years in jail. Footage circulating online makes for galling viewing: among those arrested on suspicion of terror offences were retired nurses, a blind gentleman in a wheelchair, and former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg.

What is happening? How did we get here? And most importantly, what is to be done?

The erosion of protest rights

The erosion of the right to protest has not come overnight. The previous Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Act gave police sweeping new powers to impose conditions on protests. Any disruption that causes “serious annoyance” is liable to be shut down; it introduced the statutory offence of public nuisance; and the sentence for blocking a highway was increased from a fine to 6 months in prison. This trajectory accelerated with the Public Order Act 2023, which introduced new offences such as “locking on”, and even criminalised being merely equipped to “lock on”. It also handed police the power to stop-and-search anyone at a protest without the need for suspicion of wrongdoing, criminalised ‘interference with key national infrastructure’ (any A or B road) and introduced the Serious Disruption Prevention Order, a civil order that prevents repeat offenders from exercising their right to protest altogether.

A glimmer of hope came in the form of a legal challenge to Suella Braverman’s attempt to unilaterally change the definition of what constitutes ‘serious disruption’. The High Court found this unlawful. But far from reversing course, the current government elected to take up Braverman’s case, though it ultimately lost in the Court of Appeal. It has pressed forward with the Crime and Policing Bill, which criminalises concealing ones’ identity at a protest, and creates an offence to climb on a specified war memorial or monument of national significance. And now, with the proscription of Palestine Action, it has deployed a national security tool directly against a non-violent protest movement.

What can be done?

It is time for the Liberal Democrats to reclaim the mantle of ‘the party of civil liberties’. Across the political spectrum, “tough on crime” rhetoric is in abundant supply. We will never win the race to the bottom on authoritarian posturing. Instead, we should offer a clear alternative rooted in the defence of this country’s proudest-held principles: individual freedoms, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Five things in particular should be pursued.

The first and most urgent reform is to campaign for repealing the sections of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 surveyed above. We should also campaign to remove overzealous clauses of the Crime and Policing Bill (currently in Committee).