Let’s Use Johnson’s Imminent Demise to Get Rid of His Poisonous Legacy
Please Sign Here
In the
coming session of Parliament the Government intends to introduce a new Public
Order Bill which will effectively abolish the right to all except ineffective protests
and demonstrations.
Interfering with ‘onshore oil and gas exploration and
production facilities’ i.e. fracking will now be a specific offence in itself.
Because ‘onshore oil and gas exploration’
will now be defined as ‘key national infrastructure’. And oh yes, there is no more
important infrastructure than Rupert Murdoch’s printing press. Blocking them
will also be an offence. Locking on to a gate or person will also be a new
offence.
A whole range of forms of direct action will be criminalised. The right to protest under the European Convention of Human Rights will be abolished. The recent Supreme Court decision in Ziegler will be overturned. In other words the owners of big business and capital can go about their way, harming however many people they chose to hurt and it will be a criminal offence to get in their way. It is the dictatorship of capital.
This is the
first Parliamentary
Petition that I have initiated. It couldn’t be more important that you sign
it. If the Bill is passed it will be a milestone on the road to a Police State.
You can only sign it if you are a British Citizen. Just as importantly share, share and share again on
social media and place it on your site(s).
This Bill
represents a major threat to those most basic of rights in any society that calls
itself democratic - the Right to Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Assembly
and Association. These rights
are enshrined in Articles 10 and 11 of the European
Convention of Human Rights It is little wonder that the Government intends to replace
the Human Rights Act 1998 which implements the ECHR.
I confess to having a personal interest in since I am
currently on bail for having participated last March 2021 in an action against Israel’s
arms factory, Elbit. This Bill targets and seeks to penalise Palestine Action,
Extinction Rebellion, Climate Action, Insulate Britain and similar direct
action protest groups.
In June 2021 the Supreme Court in DPP v Ziegler upheld
previous decisions of the European Court of Human Rights that
‘the protection of articles 10 and 11 ECHR
extends to a protest which takes the form of intentional disruption obstructing
others. However, the extent of the disruption and whether it is intentional are
relevant factors in the assessment of proportionality’.
The
Supreme Court upheld the acquittal of protesters at Stratford Magistrates Court
who had locked on to an access road at the Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in
East London in 2017. This Bill effectively reverses Ziegler as well as conflicting with Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR.
If this
petition gets 100,000 signatures then the
Petitions Committee will consider whether it should be debated in Parliament.
As
the Government openly admits
(below) the provisions of the Bill are aimed at the right to protest with
measures that can only be called draconian.
What
would the Public Order Bill do?
The Bill
would bring in three major changes to the way protests are policed in England
and Wales.
·
Expanding protest related offences: the Bill
would introduce four new criminal offences related to disruptive protest
including “locking-on”; being equipped to “lock-on”; obstructing major
transport works; and interfering with key national infrastructure.
·
Extending police stop and search powers: the Bill
would provide the police with new powers to stop and search people for items
related to specified protest-related offences.
·
Introducing a new preventative court order: the Bill
would create Serious Disruption Prevention Orders aimed at people who
repeatedly engage in disruptive protest activity. The orders would be issued with
conditions to prevent individuals from being in particular places or with
particular people or from participating in certain activities
EXPLAINER: The
Public Order Bill 2022
The
Network for Police Monitoring has produced below an explainer
detailing the proposals in the Bill and their implications, especially for
direct action groups. Some of these offences like the Serious Disruption Orders
can be used against trade unions and strikers. They have massive implications
for our democratic rights.
New ‘locking on’ offences
The Bill proposes that if a person locks themselves onto
another person, an object or to land and subsequently causes (or could cause)
serious disruption to two or more individuals or an organisation, then an
offence is committed. For ‘organisation’, read corporate interest. The maximum
penalty is six months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.
It also proposes another new offence of “going equipped
for locking on”. This is defined as having an item “in a place other
than a dwelling with the intention that it may be used in the course of or in
connection with” an attempt to lock on. This could mean a bicycle D-lock
or a tube of superglue. The proposed maximum penalty is an unlimited fine.
New stop and search powers
The Bill also seeks to amend section 1 of the Police and
Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) to provide the police with wide-ranging new
grounds for using stop and search powers.
These include suspicion that someone is going to commit the
offence of obstructing the highway (under section 137 Highways Act 1980),
public nuisance (section 78 of the PCSC Act) or all the new offences proposed
by the Public Order Bill (see below).
If that was not alarming enough, the Bill would also
introduce a new blanket stop and search power that does not require “reasonable
grounds”. This is essentially a version of existing section
60 powers (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) that are authorised
when there is an alleged threat of serious violence or the use of weapons.
If passed, this would put obstructing the highway, public
nuisance and the other offences in the Bill on the same footing as an imminent
threat of violent disorder.
It also means that if a senior officer believes these protest
offences are likely to take place in an area, they can approve far-reaching new
stop and search powers for a 24-hour period.
Blanket search powers are already hugely controversial, as
they excuse the police from needing to show reasonable suspicion when stopping
someone and have largely been used for racist harassment.
Black people are 40
times more likely to be stopped under Section 60 powers than their white
counterparts, and less
than 2% of searches result in any further police action. In May 2021, the
Criminal Justice Alliance made a super-complaint calling for the repeal of Section
60.
These powers are likely to be used by the police to harass
anyone they think is on the way to a protest and is part of a movement whose
very legitimacy they question. However, they are particularly worrying for
marginalised communities that already bear the brunt of racist policing.
Interference with ‘key infrastructure’
The Bill proposes an offence of interfering with “the use
or operation of any key national infrastructure in England and Wales” (or
intending to). So, what does this include? Although the Bill gives the Home
Secretary the power to add to the following list, it says infrastructure
includes:
- road transport
- rail
- air transport
- harbour
- downstream (refining) of crude oil
- downstream (processing and purification)
of natural gas
- onshore oil and gas exploration and
production
- onshore electricity generation, or
- newspaper printing infrastructure.
Had these proposed offences been in place over the last
decade, they would have severely restricted sustained and ultimately successful
local opposition to fracking sites and other environmentally destructive fossil
fuel extraction. The inclusion of newspaper production appears to result from
ministers’ anger at Extinction
Rebellion’s blockade in September 2020 of sites belonging to the
government’s close friends at News Corp.
The maximum penalty is six months imprisonment and/or an
unlimited fine in Magistrates’ Court or 12 months imprisonment and/or an
unlimited fine on indictment at the Crown Court.
Obstruction of major transport works
For anyone wanting to take action against large-scale and
damaging transport projects such as HS2, an airport expansion or a new
motorway, there is a proposed new offence of obstructing major transport works,
by blocking or interfering with equipment or blockading, for example,
construction work.
However, like so much of the Bill, this is vaguely worded and
open to very broad interpretation: obstructing construction staff from “taking
any steps that are reasonably necessary for the purposes of facilitating, or in
connection with, the construction or maintenance of any major transport works”
is also an offence and could mean almost any activity.
The maximum penalty is six months imprisonment and/or an
unlimited fine.
Serious Disruption Prevention Orders
This is one of the most disturbing elements of the new Bill.
These orders can either be made following a protester’s conviction or on
application to a Magistrates’ Court from a Chief Constable of a local police
force.
Crucially – because you do not need to be
convicted of an offence to be issued with one – Serious
Disruption Prevention Orders actively encourage the expansion of police
intelligence gathering on a range of social and political movements.
This is because they will be used to seek out and target
people whom the police perceive as key organisers and to potentially ban them from
attending, organising, or promoting protests seen as “disruptive to two or more
individuals or to an organisation” for two years or more, even if they have
never been convicted of a crime.
Furthermore, the state may decide they become guilty
of a crime if they break the rules of the order in any way – or even fail to
notify the police that they are staying somewhere else.
As Serious Disruption Prevention Orders are civil orders, the
government may allow courts to decide, on the balance of probabilities (the
civil standard of proof), that an individual is likely to cause disruption
based solely on intelligence from the police.
In March 2021, a review on the policing of protests by the
inspectorate body HMICFRS gave a green light for increased surveillance on so-called
“aggravated activists”. Serious Disruption Prevention Orders provide a
renewed impetus for police to seek out this new classification of campaigner.
Two of the following conditions need to be met for a Serious
Disruption Prevention Order:
·
A person has committed a protest-related offence.
·
A person has committed a breach of an injunction leading to a
conviction for contempt of court.
·
A person has “carried out activities related to a protest
that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption to two or
more individuals, or to an organisation, in England and Wales”.
·
A person has “caused or contributed to the commission by any
other person of a protest-related offence or a protest-related breach of an
injunction”
·
A person has “caused or contributed to the carrying out by
any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were
likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an
organisation, in England and Wales “.
Modelled on the draconian Knife Crime Prevention Orders that
systematically criminalise Black youth, conditions of Serious Disruption
Prevention Orders can include:
·
Not associating with named people
·
Not going to certain areas
·
Banning people from attending protests
·
Reporting to a police station at certain times
·
Not participating in certain activities
·
Not using the internet to commit a protest-related offence or to “carry
out activities related to a protest that result in, or are likely to result in,
serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation, in
England and Wales”.
There is also a provision in the bill for electronic
monitoring (wearing an ankle tag) of those subject to orders, for up to a year.
The version of the
Public Order Bill that has received its first reading in the House of Commons
is available here
Please sign the
Petition here
The Petition reads:
We want the Government to remove
provisions for:
- electronic tagging of people who intend to attend demonstrations
- orders not to use the internet in certain ways
- expanded stop and search powers
- new offences for "locking on" to others, objects or
buildings
We believe the measures proposed
are another step in the creation of a police state in this country, and
represent a fundamental attack on our civil liberties.
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ReplyDeleteI did but it wasn't obvious. I have inserted a link now
DeleteThank you for all that you do. Keep up the good work. We won't let them defeat us.
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