Activists Are Criminals: Introducing the Legislation Designed to Undermine Our Rights
In just a few days, the House of Lords will vote to sign the controversial Public Order Bill into law. Its passing would mark the latest in a series of assaults against the democratic and human rights of public and peaceful assembly. With the Bill’s readoption of many of the same measures thrown out last year by the Lords’ review of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, it is clear that there is a British legislative agenda that is unrelenting in its mission to associate activism with criminality.
These developments sit as a Governmental response to the growing discontentment with their handling of the cost of living crisis. Proposed strike action will now bring the UK to the edge of a de facto general strike. While public support for collective action holds strong, ten days ago Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposed new anti-strike legislation, which seeks to diminish the power of trade unions and degrade the confidence of members to engage in direct action. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill joins the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and proposed Public Order Bill as the latest move in an apparently coordinated strategy by the current Government to undermine the right to peaceful assembly as a whole and degrade public confidence in and perception over the right to protest.
Rights Under Attack
A cost of living crisis emerged in early 2022 as the disparity between historical wage growth and inflation rates grew. The crisis has motivated unions, across the UK, to mobilise their members for collective action. Yet action over the crisis is not limited to the work of unions; climate justice, anti-discrimination and other political and social pressure groups have connected the cost of living crisis to deeper institutional problems.
There is a swelling of activity around the cost of living crisis, and the inaction of Government to respond to union demands for fairer pay. Unionised strike action is instead set within a legislative agenda that challenges the very heart of their power: the legal mechanisms that allow unions to engage in collective action and protect their members from undue judicial pressure. These challenges are not just an affront to a just system of democratic checks and balances, but more broadly serves to destabilise the entire character of democratic, activist rights in the UK.
The recently-proposed Anti-Strikes Bill seeks to undermine unions’ ability to organise and mobilise their members for collective action. The Bill, if passed, would allow Ministers to write ad hoc regulations to force some workers to ignore strike actions, cross picket lines and turn up to work. It would be within the rights of employers to sack employees that do not comply with these regulations, and unions themselves could face huge fines if their members do not comply with Government demands.
The Bill is intended to divide unions, and attack the confidence of workers in their ability to demand change. By threatening unions with huge fines for the actions of members, the Bill’s measures intend to disincentive union leaders to even suggest strike action to their members. But, perhaps more concerning, the Bill proposes to undermine the confidence of all trade union members by applying monumental legal scrutiny to individual workers. The Bill undermines the essential character of the human right to peaceful assembly: that individuals are afforded a basic legal protection to engage in collective action. Those in power must deal with popular movements by addressing their collective demands, not by using the organs of State to apply pressure to individuals themselves. By applying legal pressure to individuals, workers are brought out of wider movements and into positions of exposed public scrutiny: suddenly, union members are forced to decide whether to preserve their jobs and livelihoods or defend the unity of their movements. Change cannot come at the ransom of lost livelihood.
Activists Are Criminals
The Anti-Strikes Bill fits within a larger legislative strategy that seeks to associate activism with criminality. A programme of legislation is being carefully pushed through Parliament, and it seeks to turn activism over into the grey areas of legality and cast activists into the fringes of society. The ‘Policing Act’, now enshrined in law, has laid the foundations for the increasingly ‘grey’ area of law activism now inhabits.
Despite criticism from three former Prime Ministers, over seven hundred academics, and three hundred and fifty charities, the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act was eventually passed into law late last year. The law gives the police the power to shut down protests deemed too disruptive. Among other definitions of disruption, a protest can now become illegal if it is judged by the police to be too noisy.
The Act received criticism from many organisations for placing restrictions and parameters on the right to freedom of assembly. A briefing published by a large coalition of charities and NGOs highlighted that “noise stands at the heart of protest. Making noise is how we, quite literally, make our voices heard by those in power”.
Many of the more draconian measures, originally thrown out of the Policing Act as it passed through Parliament, have now made a resurgence in the proposed Public Order Bill. Following months of protests, the Bill’s stated aim is to minimise public disruption. But much of the Bill focuses on criminalising individual acts of protest: locking on and glueing, in particular.
Whether the Public Order and Anti-Strike Bills are passed, long-term and significant harm has already been dealt to our right to assemble and call for change. It is not immediately a legal harm, although this will surely follow. Instead, it is a harm to confidence and perception.
A powerful anti-activist narrative is already in development: it is not a legal narrative, but an emotive one. Activists are criminals. By associating activism with criminality in proposed legislation, the focus of political discussion is — whether passed or not — is firmly fixed on a harmful association of activism with criminality. This association serves to degenerate activism and activists, and to draw people away from direct action in general.
The political machine’s discussion of activism serves to confuse and obfuscate citizens’ relationship to the right to protest. Suddenly, we are all forced to consider whether the peaceful protest we might attend is even legal? Or whether the volume of my chanting could result in a criminal record?
This legislative agenda chips away at not just the right to protest, but the source from which the power of direct action is derived: confident, passionate, engaged participants. By pursuing a narrative that seeks to cast activists as criminals, this legislative agenda seeks to undermine the very source of people-power: confidence.
At CAUSE, we’re developing an encrypted social network that gives activists the tools they need to discover and join protests, and in real-time support their safety when they’re campaigning. We’re building a movement of activists passionate about change. Resist the attempts to undermine our confidence in the right to peaceful assembly: join the CAUSE movement today!
This article was written by Gabriel Brown and originally published on www.cause.cx on 22 January 2023.
