Under ordinary circumstances, it would be forgivable not to be aware of the content within a 300-page parliamentary bill, but the circumstances of this particular bill are far from ordinary. The amendment “omit knowingly” regarding the Public Order Act 1986 appears multiple times, meaning that you are still liable for prosecution & conviction even if you are unaware of the adjustments to the regulations on public assembly proposed within this bill.
Furthermore, the aforementioned adjustments are as good as criminalising the right to protest specified in the European Charter of Human Rights, unless you are content to sit quietly in a corner not putting anyone “at risk” of “serious inconvenience”. Protests are by their very nature inconvenient at the very least. Make no mistake, the UK government have clearly been vexed by the organised exercising of the right to protest that has taken place over the past few years in particular, and instead of bothering to listen to the people they would rather persecute them for voicing their dissent. So misguided is this approach, that as many have already pointed out, this bill would make it possible for an individual convicted of vandalising a statue to serve more time in prison than someone convicted of rape.
Having rapidly passed through the House of Commons approximately a week after publication, we must apply more public pressure than ever to ensure its amendment if not its outright scrapping. The current UK government loved to proclaim its ideological distance from Donald Trump’s administration, and yet there is no legislation like this within US law. This bill is if anything beyond the scope of Trump’s scatter-brained presidential penning and far more akin to the draconian surveillance and security laws recently passed in Hong Kong. Towards the end of the bill, there is a section titled “Power to make consequential provision” which translates succinctly into rule by decree. To quote directly from the bill:
“(1) The secretary of state may by regulations made by statutory instrument make provision that is consequential on this Act. (2) Regulations under subsection (1) may, in particular, amend, repeal, or revoke any enactment passed or made before, or in the same session as, this Act.”
Home secretary Priti Patel, creator of the new crime legislation
If this becomes officially enshrined in law then the secretary of state, otherwise known as the home secretary (Priti Patel), will have the power to curate UK law on a whim under such pretexts as national security or public inconvenience. In effect, whenever she so pleases, as pretexts such as these are so loose that they may be applied anywhere at any time. It need not be said that legislation such as this begets dangerous ideological waters, and it would not be a stretch to declare this bill as raw materials with which to construct a fascist state in coming years. Even someone with the best of intentions and purest heart should not have access to such wide-reaching power. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a telling example, providing evidence of social roles and access to agency consuming the individual and remaking them in the image of their role’s purpose. In this experiment, the prison guards become increasingly authoritarian as time passes, their inebriation with power intensifying with the length of their exposure to such agency. In the same manner, the intentions of the home secretary may not be fascist now, but with such power behind the position it is not a question of if, but when. When will this legislation possess and re-forge proprietors of liberal democracy into executives of a fascist police state?
Numerous allegations of deep-set corruption, sexism, and racism have been levelled against both the current UK government and the police force, so it is all the more difficult to take seriously any publically benevolent intentions. At the time of writing, there is known to be 1433 deaths in police custody since 1990, and precisely 0 convictions of manslaughter. From the heavy-handed approach taken to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests to Saturday’s policing fiasco at a vigil in Clapham Common, granting further authority to law enforcement is not only morally questionable, but outright dangerous for those oppressed by the police and their discriminatory prejudices. This bill is a declaration of war on civil liberty, it is reinforcing fear while pruning our rights at its discretion. In the context of a lingering global pandemic, it is a stark example of shock doctrine, the political use of any social context provoking fear, wherein security is temporarily prioritised over freedom, and subsequent policy action making that inversion permanent.
Protest taking place outside Parliament Square
I implore you all to familiarise yourself with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill if you can find the time, a link to it can be found at the end of this article. Equally, I implore you all to engage with the campaigns against this bill however you feel you can, be it petition or protest. If this is a declaration of war then we must push back, the people united will never be defeated. This is an issue beyond the scope of partisan politics and nuanced ideology, if you stand by the European Charter of Human Rights then stand against what the UK is in serious danger of becoming: a country permanently divided between a despotic elite and their acolytes, and a people deprived of their agency as individuals.
Whose Streets? Our Streets!
The Bill: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2839
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