Opposition to the Criminalisation of Dissent

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Opposition to the Criminalisation of Dissent

The “War on Terror”: Seven Years on from the Terrorism Act

As the government are preparing to launch a bigger offensive on people’s already eroded civil liberties, a demonstration took place to defy and uphold the right to dissent and the right to conscience. Indicative of the government’s policy on the freedom of assembly and the right to demonstrate, the police were sent in to violently attack and arrest the demonstrators. The government and authorities must see this people’s dissent as a danger to the state which is now further seeking to “manage protest around parliament”. This indicates that the government fear the people, and the power of dissent, and so have continuously criminalised this dissent.

            Over 150 demonstrators were protesting in Trafalgar Square, Parliament Square and elsewhere against the Serious Organised Crime and Prevention Act (SOCPA) legislation, which has been used to arrest many people for protesting in Parliament Square and at other public spaces such as Trafalgar Square. The question should be asked; who do these public spaces belong to? The answer must be given that it is the people to whom they belong.

            Under new additions to be made to the SOCPA legislation, could be powers to criminalise the content of banners and flags, etc., with the intention that the state should decide on what people are allowed to be thinking and saying. This is an attack on the right to conscience, and will take Britain further down the road to a state that watches and defines your every move, a police state. Far from the government bringing the conditions imposed on assemblies and marches everywhere into line with those in the exclusion zone around Parliament, Sections 132-138 of SOCPA must be repealed. The right to assembly must be upheld, and the arbitrary police powers to ban marches, censor placards and banners, and decide whether or not to authorise demonstrations and protests must be denied to the authorities.

            This type of attack on basic rights is what the protesters were protesting against, and it was with a criminal police attack that they were met with, which left at least one veteran protester Brian Haw, who was filming the event, with a bloody face. Brian Haw is a thorn in the side of the New Labour government who have systematically attempted to remove Brian and prevent him from staging his protest in Parliament Square by bringing in law after law aimed at removing the beacon of opposition he personifies. Such physical violence against a human being as meted out to Brian Haw is unconscionable.

             The London demonstration began with an unauthorised rally in direct defiance of the law concerning Trafalgar Square. Civil liberties protesters then decided to “go for a stroll” around Westminster, protesting at various Whitehall ministries, Parliament Square, MI5 headquarters and New Scotland Yard, before gathering at the gates of Downing Street. Members of the notoriously violent police territorial support group swiftly moved in to drag away around a dozen protesters who had lain down and linked arms in the road. The 150-strong carried blank banners, as well as banners saying “Stop Taking Liberties” and “Don’t Let Fear Rob Us Of Our Freedom: Repeal The SOCPA Protest Bans”.

            As well as in London, civil liberties were being defended throughout the country in a national day of action against SOCPA. This defiance and resistance is reflective of the general concern in Britain for the attack on civil liberties, and illuminates the growing understanding that the British government and authorities are protecting themselves from the working class and people, a people that will not have their actions controlled by a state that seeks to destroy their rights and their fight to bring themselves to power. Increasing the resistance can only move things forward to opening up a path where the people can put their agenda forward without fear of police brutality. Their agenda for an anti-war government and to end privatisation and against the whole neo-liberal agenda should be upheld. In this climate, the people must resist and bring state violence and tyranny to an end, by organising resistance and planting the alternative.

            WDIE salutes all those who fight to defend their rights, and condemns such police brutality.

 

(for more information, see www.repeal-socpa.info ; for photos, see http://www.imageslive.net/en-us/pg_52.html ).

19 January 2008

A conference to review the developments that have taken place over the last seven years in anti-terror legislation and the campaigns challenging such legislation.

Saturday 19 January 2008, 10.30-4.30pm

Roehampton University, Duchesne Lecture Theatre, Du 04, Roehampton Lane Campus, 80 Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5SL

Speakers:

Moazzam Begg - former Guantanamo detainee and spokesperson for Cageprisoners

Chris Cooper - Chair of Peace & Progress

Liz Fekete - Deputy Director of the Institute of Race Relations

Stephanie Harrison - human rights lawyer and founder member of CAMPACC

Organised by Peace & Progress: a party for human rights. For more information or to reserve a place (£5 waged/£3 unwaged), phone 07888 841 586 or email: mail@peaceandprogress.org .