Of course! I wrote to my MP. This is what I wrote and shared with others asking them to do the same:
“Thank you for receiving this email - I wanted to raise my concern with you about the potential attack on civil liberties that aspects of this Bill represent, hopefully inadvertently. www.local.gov.uk/parliament/briefings-and-responses/police-crime-sentencing-and-courts-bill-house-commons-second
On reading the Government's fact sheets about the Bill I am struck by how driven the stuff on policing protests is driven by the frustrations encountered by the police in their efforts to deal with the civil disobedience campaign of Extinction Rebellion.
Leaving aside all the rights and wrongs of that campaign, my concern is this: the Bill needs much more careful thought and debate than it will receive over the next two days. It is scary to me that a Bill with such profound consequences for legitimate protest in this country is being driven by actions that are already illegal (civil disobedience is by definition overstepping the law). Much of the wording seems very loose, open to interpretation and would have a chilling effect on law abiding people with a right to protest - this is one of the bedrocks of our democracy and a free society.
Just two examples that seem particularly open to abuse by ministers and police:
- Broaden the range of circumstances in which police may impose conditions on a protest..."The Home Secretary will have the power, through secondary legislation, to define and give examples of “serious disruption to the life of the community” and “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried out in the vicinity of the procession/assembly/one-person protest”.
- Amend the offence relating to the breaching of conditions...."This measure will close a loophole which some protesters exploit. Some will cover their ears and tear up written conditions handed to them by the police so that they are likely to evade conviction for breaching conditions on a protest as the prosecution have to prove that the person “knowingly fails to comply with a condition imposed”. The Bill will change the threshold for the offence so that it is committed where a person “knows or ought to have known” that the condition has been imposed."
This Bill seems to increase the power of the Home Secretary and the Police to decide who is allowed to protest and who is not, to decide which protests to allow, and which protests not - so they might allow the tame, quiet, ineffective ones, but not the untamed, loud and potentially effective ones. Because whatever you think about XR's civil disobedience, and the movement Black Lives Matter, there is no doubt that there are many reasons why those groups would face prejudice and discrimination before they even got off the ground.
What about young people and their Fridays for Futures marches? Will they be 'allowed'? Whose voices will we hear? Only those backed by money and influence? The vast vast majority of people involved in all the protest movements I've listed are not criminals. They are doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, marketing professionals, former police men and women, mums, school children, dads, grandparents, people with a conscience and a love for this country and our world, and who want to live freely and peacefully in it.
We run the risk here of criminalising ordinary, law abiding citizens with sentences more appropriate to violent crimes for being part of a protest that gets away from itself or is deemed to be too loud? And where does it stop? As a result of the Clapham Common vigils - peaceful until police started kettling women - will we find that all gatherings of women will be deemed too threatening and will not be granted permission? This feels like standing at a waterslide, if we lose our footing here, we're going on a long, slippery downward spiral.
I'm sure there are many potential success stories in the Bill - I'd heard of it previously in the context of the NSPCC's work to ensure sports coaches are treated the same as other authority figures in cases of sexual abuse and that is good. But this Bill with all its flaws as well as successes cannot be rushed through.
The police and the people proposing the Bill say it's not 1986, that these are 'very very different times'. Yes, they are right - it is not 1986. At that time, the vast majority of people and the public (though not responsible corporations and Governments) were unaware of the catastrophic 'disruption to the life of the community' that was coming down the track from increased global heating caused by our abuse of fossil fuels and the global havoc that could be wreaked by zoonotic diseases caused by ecological destruction.
These are extraordinarily challenging times. We all have to stand up for a free society - for all - even the people we disagree with, and not sleepwalk our way into a situation where all our civil rights have been eroded to the point that protest is meaningless. No one should feel this does not apply to them. If ordinary citizens feel too afraid of the police, and separately the law, to go into the streets and flag up injustice, inaction, inequality and potentially impending disaster, then this will no longer be the free country that I thought I was raising my son in.
I appreciate how busy you are and how hard you work for your constituents, but I look forward to hearing from you and will be following the debate over the next two days.”