On 15 June 2023 the government altered the definition of ‘serious disruption’ in the 1986 Public Order Act (POA) to bring it in line with the one in the new 2023 POA. The 1986 Act is the main legislation used to regulate protest marches and static demonstrations in Britain. The aim is to criminalise particular groups such as Just Stop Oil (JSO), as well as to scare the rest of us who undertake any form of street activism into thinking twice or only mounting the most ineffective protest. It is not the case that all protest is now banned or illegal, and we must stand up strongly against such scaremongering; however these changes, together with others that have come in or are in the pipeline, constitute a massive attack on our democratic rights. NICKI JAMESON reports.
‘Serious disruption’ can now be considered to occur when a protest results in ‘the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to, the carrying out of day-to-day activities (including in particular the making of a journey)… the delivery of a time-sensitive product to consumers…or…access to any essential goods or any essential service.’ So, if a demonstration holds up the traffic or blocks the entrance to a shop, office or train station for more than a few seconds, a potential criminal offence has been committed.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022 had already amended the grounds for imposing conditions on protests to include where: ‘the noise generated by persons taking part in the assembly may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity’.
The police have been quick to exploit the new powers. On 28 June, City of London police officers, armed with clipboards bearing the new definition, descended on a protest march by striking NHS workers in central London, claiming that their action was causing that ‘more than minimal disruption’.
The Public Order Act 2023 also introduced new offences of ‘locking on’, ‘being equipped for locking on’, ‘causing serious disruption by tunnelling or being in a tunnel’, ‘obstruction of major transport works’ and ‘interference with key infrastructure. As became clear at the Coronation on 6 May, ‘locking on’ relates not only to direct action protesters who lock themselves to things, but also to the common act of locking, or even tying ‘an object to another object’. The anti-monarchy protesters arrested on that day had cable ties for affixing placards to street furniture.
Civil laws – criminalisation by the back door
In addition to the increasing range of criminal sanctions for protest, the government is constantly adding to its armoury of civil mechanisms with which to prevent dissent and regulate community interaction. The use of civil law is invidious in that there is a lower standard of proof needed, and sweeping powers can be used against large groups of people, including pre-emptively against those who have not yet done anything.
This type of sanction has proliferated since the Labour government introduced the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) in 1998. ASBOs were banning orders dictating that someone could not enter a particular place or do certain things. They could be implemented on the request of a local council, police force or other body, as well as by a court following a conviction.
In 2014 the Conservatives replaced the post-conviction part of this with Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs). Breaching a CBO is in itself a criminal offence, which can land you in prison. The ASBOs that were implemented without conviction were replaced by Community Protection Notices (CPN) and Civil Injunctions.
Injunctions have been increasingly used to prevent protest. In February 2022, for example, the High Court served the trade union UVW with an injunction banning striking security guards and their supporters from dancing, singing or waving banners, within 200 metres of Great Ormond Street hospital. Insulate Britain and JSO protesters have been routinely served with injunctions preventing them returning to areas where they were arrested, despite this not necessarily being a condition of their criminal bail. The company building the HS2 rail link has repeatedly attempted to keep protesters away from its sites by pre-emptively issuing injunctions against some named individuals, plus the catch-all ‘persons unknown’.
Under section 59 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, local councils may issue Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) for given areas, banning various activities, such as dog fouling, drinking alcohol or playing loud music. Although there is guidance on, for example, not using a PSPO to target rough sleepers, there is no limit on what can be included. Hillingdon council in west London has just completed its consultation on a new PSPO which it is proposed will ban leafleting, amplification and the placing of tables, stands and signage on the highway from October 2023. Once a PSPO is in place, anyone deemed to breach it can be issued with a fixed penalty notice.
All this will soon be joined by Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs), a new provision included in the POA 2023 but not yet in force. SDPOs are specifically for protesters, and can be imposed for a period of up to two years, either following a protest-related conviction, or alternatively following an application to the magistrates’ court by a chief constable without any type of criminal penalty needing to have been imposed. They can be comprised of a wide range of conditions: not to go to places or associate with people, not to use the internet for certain purposes, not to possess specified items and not to participate in specified activities. A person subject to one can be electronically tagged for monitoring purposes for up to 12 months. Breaching the SDPO is in itself a criminal offence, punishable by a fine or a prison sentence.
Building the fightback
All these laws, criminal and civil, are elements in an all-pervading programme being steamrollered into law by this repressive government, in response to the current economic crisis. This onslaught faces no real parliamentary opposition as it tramples over our democratic rights, but the government can only succeed here if we allow it to. Environmental defenders, strikers and others are continuing to take to the streets, uncowed by the panoply of legal attacks. Just Stop Oil has not stopped invading sports pitches and slow marching on the highway. Palestine Action activists continue to take direct action against Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. And those of us who mount small protests week in, week out, against racism, bad housing, the destruction of the NHS and the imposition of austerity measures on the working class, continue to assert our right to do so.
Further repressive measures
Other recently passed Acts and Bills nearing parliamentary completion, include:
- National Security Act: introduces new espionage laws to target people accused of spying for foreign powers; makes people convicted of terrorism ineligible for legal aid to sue the government for assault or other state crimes against them, and reduces the damages they can be awarded if they do successfully sue.
- Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act: while ‘protecting free speech on campus’, of course sounds like a laudable aim, this Act is not aimed at protecting the rights of students who speak out against their universities’ links to slavery or investment in Israel, for example. The ‘free speech’ here is that of Zionists, anti-trans bigots and right-wing racists, who have spuriously been claiming to have been ‘cancelled’ by the liberal establishment they imagine to be dominating higher education institutions.
- Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act: designed to reduce the efficacy of industrial action by declaring that in the event of a strike in a range of sectors (health, fire and rescue, education, transport, decommissioning of nuclear installations and management of radioactive waste and spent fuel, border security), the government can demand that a minimum level of staffing is maintained and can take legal action for compensation against unions that do not abide by a notice to do this.
- Victims and Prisoners Bill: ostensibly about the rights of victims of crime, this Bill is a Trojan Horse for measures which will further increase the power of the state to over-ride decisions by the Parole Board to release prisoners. The ‘rights of victims’ are only of any real interest to the state when weaponised to achieve greater punishment.
British Bill of Rights gone
One small positive development is that on 27 June, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk confirmed that the government would not be pushing ahead with the Bill of Rights Bill. This Bill, introduced by Chalk’s odious predecessor Dominic Raab in June 2022, would have reversed the 1998 Human Rights Act’s incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic British law, replacing the HRA with some kind of ‘British Bill of Rights’. Written primarily to please readers of the Daily Mail, as we wrote at the point Liz Truss first shelved the Bill ‘it was so badly drafted as to be incomprehensible even to most of its supporters’.
FRFI 295 August/September 2023
