Defend our Right to Protest for Palestine

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We won't be silenced

Israel’s project to erase Palestinians along with their history, culture, and their liberation struggle, extends globally to using its allies to repress Palestinian voices and their allies around the world. Here in Britain, the government is escalating its attempts to erode our civil liberties in order to maintain its complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide and apartheid. Despite this, together we have built one of the largest and most sustained protest movements in British political history as we continue to take to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and target the pillars of this complicity.

The government's extreme new proposal to further erode the right to protest

Right now, the government is using the Crime and Policing Bill to introduce a new measure, which if it becomes law, would provide the police with new powers to restrict or effectively ban protests based on their supposed ‘cumulative disruption’. This draconian attack follows a succession of illiberal anti-protest laws, the criminalisation of chants and slogans, prosecution of performance artists and its disgraceful use of anti-terror legislation to label direct action as terrorism.

The police will be required to take into account any cumulative disruption caused by past or future protests in the same ‘area’ when deciding whether to impose restrictions, notwithstanding if the protests are for the same cause. An anti-racist march could be blocked from Whitehall because of a previous farmers’ protest, or a pride march restricted because a far-right demonstration was recently held in the same town. It could be used by this, and any future government, to effectively stamp out protests altogether.

Over 45 civil society organisations including the Trades Union Congress, Liberty and Greenpeace have come together to demand the government withdraws this proposal, joining more than 100 leading legal scholars and lawyers, and over 100 members of Parliament. Our right to protest – including in solidarity with the Palestinian people – is a precious democratic principle and it must be defended.

Watch our explainer video below:

Our campaigns officer explains why it is so vital we build opposition to the government’s attempts to give the police new powers to effectively ban repeat protests.