To think there shouldn't be a right to *protest*

[Bathingnow]

People constantly repeat that the right to protest is some kind of sacred democratic principle that must be protected at all costs. I genuinely do not understand why this is taken as an unquestionable truth. What about the rights of everyone else? What about the right to go to work, get children to school, attend hospital appointments, or simply go about daily life without being obstructed, shouted at, or intimidated?

I fully support the right to dissent. People should be able to express views that challenge the government, corporations, or any other powerful body. That is a basic part of a free society. Free expression means being allowed to say unpopular things without fear of punishment. It does not mean having a free pass to disrupt other people’s lives or hold them hostage to your cause.

If you believe for example climate change is an emergency and the government should “just stop oil”, fine. Argue your case. Write letters to newspapers. Lobby MPs. Stand in Speaker’s Corner and shout yourself hoarse. Post endlessly on social media. Organise debates, whatever. All of that is legitimate and entirely compatible with democracy. None of it requires blocking roads, gluing yourself to infrastructure, or preventing ordinary people from getting where they need to be.

The idea that making life miserable for strangers somehow advances your cause is absurd. Blocking an ambulance, stopping a parent getting to work, or preventing someone from attending a funeral does not win hearts and minds. It just creates resentment. You are not enlightening people. You are inconveniencing them and expecting applause for it.

This applies to every issue, whether it is climate change, Gaza, housing, or anything else. A cause does not become morally superior simply because the people shouting about it feel very strongly. Once a protest crosses the line into infringing on other people’s civil liberties, it stops being a protest and starts being coercion.

Democracy should protect free speech and peaceful expression. It should also protect the public from disruption imposed by self appointed activists who believe their views trump everyone else’s rights. If exercising a so called right to protest requires trampling over the freedoms of others, then that right needs serious limits. I see no reason why the ability to disrupt daily life should be treated as some untouchable democratic virtue.

I'm against all protests which come at the cost of others, regardless of the cause.

Why should you have the right to cause hardship to other people just because you believe strongly in something?

If I were to stand in your way and stop you from going home or to wherever you want to go, you'd rightly call it out as injust. Do you think it becomes righteous if I claim I'm doing so in the name of whatever cause?

Being obstructed from going about your daily life is an injustice.

Totally, and it took many years to get any teeth at all into the DDA, and there's an awful lot headed backwards, but it's no longer illegal for us to expect and hold our ground over access. The laws we where breaking got changed and it ceased to be illegal for us to demand equality. (getting it, is of course a constant ebb and flow in progress)

Yes i get that but what you re saying is protests should only be allowed in remote Scottish Islands where no one can be inconvenienced, even then, the local Sheep farmer will be pissed off, when he cannot tend his sheep..... so what would really happen is no protests.

Any protest held in any city at any time will delay someone somewhere.

No one is stopped from going home, they may be delayed but whats the alternative?

I think this is a very privileged take.

patiently

You are able to go about your daily life as you understand it in 2026 because of protest that inconvenienced others.

Protests exist because some people cannot go about their daily life in the freedom you can, whether that's because their cities are being bombed or because they face legal and social discrimination (that you luckily don't) or because they foresee a miserable future existence on a burning planet.

Correct. So when disabled people obstructed able bodied people as a result of their protests about that continuous injustice, which group of people do you find to be suffering the greater wrong?

Who's qualified to decide that?

The point is that the world is full of injustice and we need to look to compromises not draconian measures. Freedom to protest is a system of checks and balances that helps us prevent rioting and civil breakdown. Society is already pretty fragile and needs little to break it.

We all ready have laws, they where enforced against protesters holding banners saying 'Piss on Pity' as it was considered offensive, they often weren't enforced on disabled protesters for obstruction ( we got de arrested for obstruction when they couldn't get us into custody suites) because the police didn't have the facilities rather proving our point about the lack of equal provision.
They aren't being enforced now because they don't have the man power or funding.

The alternative is change happens at the ballot box. Why should someone have the right to infringe upon other people's liberties just because they have strong beliefs on a subject?

It's OK. In England you have fewer and fewer of these inconveniences every year. No one outside looking in praises your civil liberties

In that case would you support legislation making it mandatory to vote?

I don’t believe there’s a verified example of a protest blocking an ambulance and devastating though it is, missing a funeral or getting to work late (why does this only matter for parents btw?) is not life threatening. If you believe there’s climate emergency is threatening lives (which it is, on any reading) then causing disruption is a a reasonable action.

I’m at a loss as to how you can’t understand this.

The whole purpose of many protests is to cause inconvenience and frustration. The population needs to be pissed and want it to stop, otherwise the policymakers have no need to listen; it doesn’t affect them.

If protests don’t cause inconvenience and frustration minorities have no way to make their voices heard - it’s basic psychology, google minority social change. Cognitive dissonance is how an individual starts to change their mind - if you can’t get your message heard, how is the majority supposed to know there is an alternative point of view?

The whole point of the right to protest being enshrined in law is to make sure no one has the right to dictate which protests are valid and allowed - they all are.

Take away any of these basic facets and we lose - the right to protest as you see fit, for any cause you choose is a basic right.

Just because the majority of us in the UK live in a relatively tolerant society now does not mean it will always be this way. If we give up our right to protest, our right to inconvenience, to be heard we lose our voice. It’s amazing how fast other choices are eroded when you have no voice. Abortion rights in the US is a case in point.

I would much rather live in a world where I am mildly inconvenienced on a regular basis, knowledgable about world events, finding out information for myself which I can make decisions on. I don’t want to live in a world where ignorance is bliss, if I don’t know about it I don’t have a problem, where the information about general events is selected by me with my own subjective choices and filtered through the lens of biased media (and they all are, despite what you believe). I want to be forced to hear, to question and make my own mind up. Again we are confusing comfort with happiness - being comfortable is not something to strive for, not all the time.

It isn’t. It might be annoying, but it’s not an injustice.

I’m an ex police officer who has policed more protests than I care to remember, including some that crossed over into violent disorder or riots.

I roll my eyes at a lot of protestors. An amazing number of them are in love with the idea of protest far more than they are informed about the issue which they claim to be protesting about. I’ve met protestors who can’t even identify the legislation/group they’re protesting about! Despite all of that, I passionately support the right to protest. (For anyone interested, IME climate change protestors seem to be the most well informed).

Nuisance as it often is for those who don’t agree, protest is a cornerstone of a healthy democratic society. Look at Iran right now.

My only observation nowadays is that there are now so many protests about so many different issues that many of them have just become background noise to a anyone who doesn’t care about that particular issue and cease to have any impact other than inconveniencing local populations. It’s actually made it easier for politicians to ignore them. That’s still better than not being allowed to protest though.

That’s laughable OP. Look at most legislation for social change, it takes years of protest before lawmakers/policymakers sit up and listen.
Women’s votes, gay marriage, maternity rights, WASPIE compensation, ethnic minority rights. These didn’t happen because people voted, they happened because people protested their rights.

That is easily solved by going to live somewhere where it is banned.

So essentially you're happy for people to take action as long as it causes nobody to really notice and nothing changes. Ummm

I understand your frustration but unfortunately many issues can't be solved by just waiting long enough and voting at the ballot box.
Sorry to be harping on about disability rights but they're a good example of where huge numbers of affected people are too thinly spread for it to be a voting issue unless the general public back us.
Look at the recent situation where it took massive protest to make this government realize their method of proposed PIP cuts, bore little resemblance to defining how disabled someone was or wasn't.
The only real way to get the public and MP's to listen to us was to turn up en mass in person. It caused a lot of inconvenience to others in Westminster and on the transport network because of the numbers of us all coming out at once, but what would you have us do?

Well, there were plenty of Palestinians inconvenienced, that’s for sure. The bus drivers in Iran are no doubt inconvenienced, and even Trump is now openly encouraging them. I think the OPs position is ridiculous.

The UK doesn't really have a constitution - so rights are a movable feast.

But if it did, then it's worth looking at the US first amendment in full ...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The fact that assembly is a protected right means that any law that restricts it needs to be very well drafted. Something successive SCOTUS have repeatedly reaffirmed.

(You'd never guess where the tax dodges got the idea from 😎)

So you want to ban all protests and only allow voting... then someone will come along, doubtless support by people like yourself and say:

"these elections, they are really are stopping the country from progressing and the government thinks we should get rid of them...."

Its happened in many countries before.

So if I were to park across your driveway, either blocking you in or out, you wouldn't view that as an injustice? And if you would, what changes when I say I'm doing so in the name of X cause?

I would actually be okay with protests at appropriate venues, eg Parliament. But when it directly affects ordinary people, that's an injustice.

In what way is a protest inherently different from a child throwing a tantrum until it's parents give in?

Numbers isn't an issue in itself. If you wanted to organize 10k people coming to Parliament and raising your voices, I'd be fine with that. Even if an unintended consequence is car/public-transport traffic.

What I have an issue with is Tom making Harry's life miserable because he's unhappy about something in his own life. Your right to make your displeasure known should stop at the point where you actively infringe on other people's rights to live their lives.

What makes the person with an agenda more important than the rest of us?