The above quote is from the late US civil rights activist and politician John Lewis. Featured image credit: Markus Spiske on pexels.com
The right to dissent by Sue Weaver
In July last year I was reading the Unbearable Lightness of Being in a Cardiff police cell. In there I found an answer to my lingering questions about why I’d chosen to risk arrest. In the novel, an editor in Prague, a Czech living through Russian terror, organises a petition for the amnesty of mistreated political prisoners, though he knows it will be useless and will likely lead to his persecution. It becomes clear that ‘his true goal was not to free the prisoners; it was to show that people without fear still exist’. In the police cell, it made profound sense that it was equally important for me and my 12 companions, immediately after the proscription of Palestine Action, to show that we were not afraid, not even of terrorism charges.
The courage to publicly dissent in the face of violent repression was what ultimately led to the achievements of American civil rights protestors, suffragettes, chartists, Ghandi’s followers campaigning for independence and so many others whose identities we have forgotten, who faced violent state opposition in pursuit of their aims – which we now agree were just. Our Cardiff protest was less risky. I knew my silent meditation with a placard would likely lead only to arrest, and perhaps eventually a fine, though I hadn’t expected 30 hours incarceration while our house was raided at 3.00 am.
It doesn’t matter whether you agree with me that in proscribing a non-violent direct action organisation, Palestine Action, the UK government had pushed the limits of the Terrorism Act of 2000 too far. I intend to make that argument in my defence in court. What matters to me now is that as citizens of a modern democracy we do what is needed to retain the right to express dissent publicly and peacefully. I am afraid that Power (in the form of mainstream media and international financial systems, as well as our UK government), is pushing back mightily against that right.
In the last 25 years, new laws have steadily hemmed in all who wish to publicly make a point or protest. It seems to make little difference what flavour of government – Conservative or Labour alike seem keen to retain the confidence of international finance, tech companies, fossil fuel advocates, agri-business and other multi-nationals by squashing dissent amongst ordinary folk with no access to power. Since the Terrorism Act of 2000 it has been possible to proscribe as terrorists tho+se who take direct action causing serious damage to property, regardless of no threat to human life. In response to concerns that the legislation might be used to target activists involved in property damage, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw stated that ‘people supporting one or another of the international causes will not even remotely come under the Bill’. Now we know that his reassurances were worthless.
Notable advances in police powers to deter or restrict protest since 2000 include the 2019 milestone of the first person for many decades being imprisoned for peaceful protest (12 months, for glueing himself to a plane) – now followed by hundreds of other imprisonments. Subsequent legal changes include the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (PCSC) which allows police to impose conditions, including criminalising certain tactics and a new public nuisance offence with a maximum sentence of 10 years. In 2023 the Public Order Act created new offences such as locking on and interfering with infrastructure, accompanied by expanded stop and search powers.
Current plans outlined by the Home Secretary are looking to further restrict protest by considering ‘cumulative impact’ (Synagogues were notably mentioned as likely to need such protection, from Palestine supporters, but not asylum hostels targeted by the far right). Even more recently she has referred to a wish to expand police powers to identify and therefore restrict dissenting movements as sites of subversion tied to ‘foreign’ or ‘hostile’ interests. Here we see dissent potentially being framed as ‘subversion’.
The UK’s increasing criminalisation of dissent makes it an outlier internationally; for example we have been arresting environmental protesters at 3 times the average global rate. The UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst reported in 2024: ‘I am therefore seriously concerned by these regressive new laws.’ and expressed the view that ‘the right to peaceful protest is a basic human right, and is an essential part of a healthy democracy. Protests, which aim to express dissent, are by their nature disruptive. This does not mean that they are not peaceful, and the UN Human Rights Committee has made clear that states have a duty to facilitate the right to protest.’
Dissenting voices have extended and protected our freedoms over hundreds of years. As the tide turns against dissenters, who will be left to risk arrest, fines, imprisonment, job losses, inability to obtain insurance or restrictions on travel? It seems that it’s mainly elderly folk with pensions or the very young and brave who see little hope of a normal future, in a world collapsing under environmental overshoot.
Postscript
On 13th February the Judicial Review looking at the proscription of Palestine Action, announced its decision that the Home Secretary’s proscription was unlawful. To those arrested and some like me already charged under the Terrorism Act, this was astonishing, as we were well aware that the Review had had its one rather independent judge replaced at the last minute by three known pro-government judges.
‘Unlawful’ but still in place, while the new Home Secretary appeals to a higher court. Appeals may go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. One of the two grounds for finding the proscription unlawful was a legalistic interpretation of the reasoning behind the proscription, but the other, to my relief, was the finding that it contravened ECHR articles 10 and 11 on freedom of speech and assembly. It is a comfort to know there is still protection for protest and dissent beyond our national boundaries.
My trial for the first arrest in July is postponed…