To feel uneasy about how quiet everyone is about this happening?

[Maxnon]

Here are a few articles about a new bill going through, but really there isn't enough being spoken about it in the media.

Politics.co.uk: Anti-protest bill: Freedom dies in silence "The truly frightening thing was that they didn’t even argue for it. Over two days of debate and dozens of speeches, not one government minister actually defended the anti-protest powers in the new policing bill. Only one MP did."

The Economist: An illiberal bill to suppress protest in Britain

Guardian: 'Bill that curtails ability to protest in England and Wales passes second reading' "The DUP MP Gavin Robinson said: “The loose and lazy way this legislation is drafted would make a dictator blush. Protests will be noisy, protests will disrupt and no matter how offensive we may find the issue at their heart, the right to protest should be protected.”

Opinion: The Right to Protest is important in any credible democracy. Whilst I appreciate the current covid restrictions makes protest harder, in general, this should only be temporary until the pandemic slows down and we are back to some normality. A bill making potentially permanent changes to the Right to Protest makes me feel uneasy. Is that unreasonable?

YANBU.

I don't understand a pp's claim that this is all about "stopping people glueing themselves to trains".

It is ALREADY illegal to do that. It is already illegal to damage property etc, including when protesting. We don't
need a new law for that so that's not what this new law is for.

YANBU - these stories are so shocking that I have to be honest, I thought it was fake news at first. The petition against this has £163k signatures so far so at least it will have to be debated in parliament.

And I agree with PPs about how terrifying it is watching so many people accept living under the equivalent of a police state for over a year. Where it is illegal to see your own family, leave your country or engage in protest. It's been a salient lesson in how precious our human rights are and how quickly they can be taken away.

how terrifying it is watching so many people accept living under the equivalent of a police state for over a year. Where it is illegal to see your own family, leave your country or engage in protest

We are in the middle of a pandemic, that's totally different

I discuss politics much of the time amongst friends and acquantainces. This bill is horrific. It does, as PP have noted, outlaw suffrage and protest like Orgreave.

Frogs may not boil, but we are being boiled.

I'd prefer more safeguards and the terms need to be carefully defined. The police need powers to function, but on the other hand tend to use them too freely.

Another way to look at it though is this.

If it's important enough protesters would be willing to be arrested. If you protect the right to protest too much it becomes something to do when you're bored. A 'get out of jail free' for any disruption you fancy causing is itself wrong.

I think the right to strike is similar. When people first went on strike it was because they were suffering so badly that losing their job would probably not make it much worse. The need outweighed even the risk of being arrested or imprisoned.

Much later on it got so you could go on strike for nicer office chairs.

The political campaign group Best for Britain has launched a campaign against this, which may at least make more people aware. There is a crowdfunder on their website.

What can we do about it?

There are people on my local FB page complaining about it now and bemoaning our loss of civil rights.

The same people who 2 months ago were baying for the police to stand at local car parks and arrest visitors to our town and taking surreptitious photos of people they thought didn't look like locals and putting them on social media.

Oh, the irony!

I can understand why tighter laws might be needed to prevent protests which cause "serious disruption" to lawful activities, or "serious unease, alarm and distress" (eg, protestors shouting at women and staff outside abortion clinics.)
But any law like that needs to be so carefully worded, so carefully drafted, to ensure that the threshold is high and that it can't be interpreted in such a way as to clamp down on reasonable, peaceful protest. The balance is so precarious and if any further restrictions are needed then they must be as minimal as possible, IMO. (Same with free speech in general).

That balance is missing from this bill.

This bill gives the Home Secretary the power to change the legal meaning of the term "serious disruption".
The problem, (like it often is) is going to be in how certain words are defined. And in who is in charge of those definitions.

Even if you love Priti Patel and completely trust her judgement in what is "reasonable",
What about the next Home Secretary and the next government?
What about the one after that?
And the one after that?

It’s scary but I think we have collectively resigned ourselves to totalitarianism.

This bill will be passed, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. We could arrange a mass protest of a million people and it would still go through, as recent history has shown.

We are impotent against what is being forced upon us. We can’t even vote to remove this behaviour because both sides of the house see the personal and nepotistic advantages of treating the populace in this way.

Maybe our children or grandchildren will rise up again or maybe we will revert to serfdom for several generations? Who knows. What I do know is that those in power will do what they want and enact those laws that they choose, and the populace will be manipulated into thinking those laws are for our own good, and there is f-all we can do about it.

YANBU I want to scream this from the rooftops, but actually who would even listen? We are being silenced and work towards this began a good while ago. I am actually depressed by the potential of this.

We are in the middle of a pandemic, that's totally different

Many (if not all?) fascist states come about because of an "emergency situation". Otherwise the population would never accept it. Human rights are only ever taken away "for the good of the people". You're perfectly entitled to agree with it but you have to accept that you're on the side of the authoritarians.

@skirk64

YABU. One, because there are several threads about this already, two, because people have the right not to care, and most importantly, all this does is protect innocent people from having their lives disrupted.

People will still be allowed to protest! They will just have to do it in a way that doesn't intimidate or otherwise inconvenience people who are not protesting and are just trying to go about their business. There's nothing wrong with that idea.

If it makes a protestor think twice before supergluing themselves to a train, good. If it makes organisers think through their plans more carefully to ensure they get their message across peacefully and safely, great. If it gives authorities the power to lock up people who feel their right to cause trouble and smash property outweighs the rights of others to feel safe, fantastic.

Frankly, if you can't persuade people with calm discussion then perhaps your argument is not as strong as you think it is.

All this bill does is tip the scales slightly, to make them a little less in favour of mob rule.

Absolutely this. It’s a great idea; about time.

@namechangemarch21

I'm not UK-based, read about this recently and am genuinely shocked. It would influence me in deciding to move back.

So...the suffragettes, the miners, anti-war protesters.... all criminals? If this law passed in a country in the Middle East a few years ago MPs would be expressing their concern about democracy in the region. I honestly don't understand how there hasn't been more fuss and can only blame the media in some ways: this should be front page news, debate about it should be in the headlines, and people should be protesting against it while they can, and I suspect would be if it weren't for COVID. Its a really unbelievable piece of legislation.

Correct my history but the suffragettes were breaking the law. Many were arrested, charged and imprisoned. Indeed it was an aspect of their strategy which not all agreed with.

Putting it bluntly whilst many suffragettes were happy to March and lobby, others wanted to break the law. Any law just so long as they got arrested.

One, because there are several threads about this already, two, because people have the right not to care, and most importantly, all this does is protect innocent people from having their lives disrupted.

Don't worry everyone. We still have the right to protest, as long as the government and police agree and nobody is inconvenienced. Nothing to see here.

If it makes a protestor think twice before supergluing themselves to a train, good

This is already illegal, that's why many extinction rebellion protesters have been arrested. What this bill is doing is giving police the right to decide what is and isn't an acceptable protest. This is chilling.

Oh god I can't even be bothered to argue this. It's too depressing.

@Xenia

Ditto all the mandatory CV19 laws which do not even let us leave the house or marry - in various forms in force since March 2020. I have been against them all but most of the UK has been utterly behind them as they sleep walk into a police state.

Yes, I hear you all the way on this, but whenever you try to discuss it on here you get shouted down as a "granny killer".

@skirk64

Actually, this suggests it is relatively quiet: "Politics.co.uk: Anti-protest bill: Freedom dies in silence "The truly frightening thing was that they didn’t even argue for it. Over two days of debate and dozens of speeches, not one government minister actually defended the anti-protest powers in the new policing bill. Only one MP did."

As for people having the "right not to care", you mean having a laissez-faire attitude? Be careful what you wish for or support, because it might come true. If you were ever to have an issue that you wanted to have a voice about, then others will have a right not to care too.

Reminds me of this Holocaust Memorial Day poem: FIRST THEY CAME – BY PASTOR MARTIN NIEMÖLLER

@namechangemarch21 Exactly!

YANBU. I have been verbally battered on here by posters when I have tried to say things are not right with this government and we are sliding into a dark place almost with consent.

My main criticism has been the emergency covid laws and curtailments of freedoms, but particularly making basic rights illegal like having family in your garden. Actually illegal.

They got away with that and they are now getting away with this - curtailing the right to protest. They say it is just violent protest, but look at the way peaceful anti-lockdown protesters were treated by the police. It was the police who were provoking the crowd to get them to react by interfering with the protest, whilst letting BLM protests wreak carnage across London whilst the police knelt in deference.

Dark times. Where is William of Orange when you need him?

YANBU this is so worrying, and I agree that it has not been well publicised and scrutinised enough for something which makes a permanent (not temporary like the COVID stuff) significant change to our fundamental freedoms. I agree that a lot of people are not aware of it as everyone’s bandwidth is exhausted just trying to make it through this pandemic, but that’s when you expect a government in a modern liberal democracy to be standing against this sort of thing, not waving it through. Although this government does indeed to me have a worryingly authoritarian leaning, and the other issue is that as you say, the majority of the public seem to be blithely trusting in them to safeguard our best interests, even going so far as to excuse Boris on the many serious mistakes he has made during this pandemic which has cost huge unnecessary loss of life. I said to my parents a few years ago even pre-pandemic that the whole political, economic and social atmosphere is worryingly reminiscent to me of what I studied at school about the era in which Hitler rose to power. But what can the plebs like me do about it?? Serious question, it’s not that I don’t care, I care passionately about this but I have zero personal power to change anything in this society. It worries me that we are all so busy worrying about what to watch on Netflix and what Harry and Meghan have said etc. that we are missing a new totalitarian regime being quietly ushered in while we were not paying attention.

@roundturnandtwohalfhitches

The Free Speech brigade have been v quiet on this. Presumably they think it doesn't apply to them. Just the left. Fascists under the guise of libertarians .

I don't know who you mean but many of us feel completely silenced and utterly alone after lockdown, have you seen the thread about lockdown sceptics on the Coronavirus board? There is no one left to speak.

52 "I am trying hard to raise my kids to see the Police as a good force in society and to approach them for help if needed (how I was raised). But my heart is NOT in it. And this Govt gets increasingly authoritarian"

I'd raise them to be wary. Someone said here, if the police offered you a lift at night, you'd take it. Why? Would they offer a man a lift?

My experience of just getting a crime reference from the police was horrible. I wanted to claim on insurance and was ridiculed because my stuff wasn't "worth anything".

As a woman of colour, I am renewing my passport next year when I don't need one - but suppose I have to prove I was born here? Will a birth certificate be enough? Best pay the £80 for an unwanted passport 🤷🏻‍♀️

@dividedwefall I agree with you that making having family in your garden illegal as opposed to advised against was the point for me at which I started to become alarmed and feel the government had gone too far. Particularly because there was no evidence of widespread disregard of the guidelines, in fact people have been more compliant than the government initially expected. Before that, although I saw people raising concern about the restrictions I felt it was a temporary evil for the common good and the law around it was reasonable.

@Mygardenisnotperfect

YANBU this is so worrying, and I agree that it has not been well publicised and scrutinised enough for something which makes a permanent (not temporary like the COVID stuff) significant change to our fundamental freedoms. I agree that a lot of people are not aware of it as everyone’s bandwidth is exhausted just trying to make it through this pandemic, but that’s when you expect a government in a modern liberal democracy to be standing against this sort of thing, not waving it through. Although this government does indeed to me have a worryingly authoritarian leaning, and the other issue is that as you say, the majority of the public seem to be blithely trusting in them to safeguard our best interests, even going so far as to excuse Boris on the many serious mistakes he has made during this pandemic which has cost huge unnecessary loss of life. I said to my parents a few years ago even pre-pandemic that the whole political, economic and social atmosphere is worryingly reminiscent to me of what I studied at school about the era in which Hitler rose to power. But what can the plebs like me do about it?? Serious question, it’s not that I don’t care, I care passionately about this but I have zero personal power to change anything in this society. It worries me that we are all so busy worrying about what to watch on Netflix and what Harry and Meghan have said etc. that we are missing a new totalitarian regime being quietly ushered in while we were not paying attention.

Theory. Could the reason the government are leaning towards authoritarianism be because of how the Communist regime in China has emerged to be a relative wealthy country and were apparently better able to manage the pandemic?

It might look to those in power that democracy is more hassle than its worth. And if people have a laissez-faire, "right to not care" (@skirk64 own that), then they have consented to a dictatorship-like-state by default?

I am uneasy - I have contacted my MP and urge other to do so. This is a cynical attempt by this government to push this through while we are distracted by COVID and Brexit.

They have so shown their hands that they show nothing but contempt for most of us. We are only worth considering if we are useful, heaven forbid we show dissent.
But we must be the squeaky wheels and that the end of one-way top-down leadership is over. We can only consent to being governed if we can collaborate not just be meat for the machine.

Yanbu.
I got reply from my mp talking about the good things that this bill has in it, saying that it was going to be reviewed by committee before being sent back. She voted for the Bill (and lost my vote and respect).
Using good law to also push through bad law is underhand and despicable. I wonder what the government is scared of? They seem to have forgotten why they are there.