We must do all we can to protect the right to peaceful protest

The next few weeks will be an acid test for the Starmer government: as they bring the rioting under control, will they honour the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, and restore our longstanding, traditional right to peaceful protest? 

Tom Brake is the Director of Unlock Democracy   

With businesses still boarded up, and the extensive damage caused by far-right rioters still visible in many of our towns and cities, now might not be considered the best time to assess the strength and relevance of Articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantee the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

I disagree.  Adapting Charles Dickens’ famous quotation, the worst of times is the best of times to stress test these principles, drawn up just over, and just under, 75 years ago respectively.  

If the principles embodied in these articles hold good today, and in the aftermath of severe disturbances, they will do so in peacetime too.

What ground rules do they lay down?

These articles guarantee the right, both to express a view that the level of legal or illegal immigration is too high (or too low), and to gather peacefully to express that view.  They also allow opponents of Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – which states that ‘Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’ – to speak out against it.

In other words, people can freely debate the merits or otherwise of immigration and asylum policy and can assemble to make their views on the subject known.  If they gather peacefully and without incitement to violence, they are acting within the law and can expect their protest to be dealt with accordingly.

This is what people did on Wednesday, gathering in their thousands, in overwhelmingly good natured rallies to demonstrate in the words of the Daily Express that, ‘United Britain, Stands Firm Against Thugs’.

Equally clearly, there is nothing in these Articles that permits the xenophobic, islamophobic and wanton violence that has defiled our streets in the last week or so: violence which its perpetrators have sought to justify by linking their mindless aggression to the tragic and appalling murders in Southport. Protests that target people because of their colour, or their faith, or seek to deny their right to life, must be clamped down on ruthlessly.

When the frenzy of alcohol and social media fuelled lawlessness has abated, the police will need to investigate the extent to which demonstrators have been radicalised by agitators, be they politicians, influencers or foreign actors? 

This investigation shouldn’t hesitate to review the role ill-informed and complicit keyboard warriors and tech giants have played in stoking tensions and to bring forward measures to curtail their activities if their impact has been significant.  We are all sick and tired of hearing about these uber rich firms’ unwillingness to stem the flow of bile, or their claimed heroic but ineffective efforts to halt it, or in Elon Musk’s case, his enthusiasm for adding to it.

Its recommendations could lead to an overhaul of the Prevent Programme (which is designed to prevent vulnerable people being drawn into extremism) as it is likely to find some people have been brainwashed, whilst others have been tempted by nothing more ideological than the chance to have a fight with the police or indulge in a spot of casual looting on a hot summer’s evening.

Some politicians have suggested there is the ‘impression’ that the police have adopted a two tier approach to the policing of far right protests versus the Gaza or Black Lives Matter demonstrations.  Their suggestions haven’t been supported by evidence.

But where the police and the courts should adopt a more lenient approach is towards the handling of peaceful protests by climate change activists.  It is very hard to understand the rationale behind issuing a lower prison sentence to someone guilty of punching a police officer in the face during the riots, than to an activist guilty of participating in a zoom call planning peaceful action.

Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, in a statement this January about the situation in the UK, said, “The right to peaceful protest is a basic human right. It is also an essential part of a healthy democracy. Protests, which aim to express dissent and to draw attention to a particular issue, are by their nature disruptive. The fact that they cause disruption or involve civil disobedience does not mean they are not peaceful. As the UN Human Rights Committee has made clear, States have a duty to facilitate the right to protest, and private entities and broader society may be expected to accept some level of disruption as a result of the exercise of this right.”^[1]

Reversing the UK’s new found appetite for eye-watering prison terms for environmental activists would not only help address the UN’s concerns, but also make it easier for the UK to hold other governments to account that are also cracking down on legitimate protest.  Our Foreign Secretary will be so much more comfortable challenging the Russian government, over its arrest of around 20,000 anti-war protesters, when the UK stops handing out harsh prison sentences to non-violent protesters here.

The next few weeks will be an acid test for the Starmer government: as they bring the rioting under control, will they honour the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, and restore our longstanding, traditional right to peaceful protest?  Or will the events of the past week or so lead to a crackdown and yet more legislation that fails to discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate protest?