Rishi Sunak's Plans to Kill Off the Right to Protest

Today was a landmark moment in the fight for our basic democratic rights and against new restrictions which should alarm us all

The Government’s ‘anti-extremism’ adviser today unveiled alarming new proposals for the most extreme and draconian set of anti-protest measures ever seen in the UK.

If accepted by the Government it would amount to the biggest restrictions yet on our long-fought rights to protest.

The proposals include:

• Powers to ban protest groups from organising, or raising money if they are judged to be causing ‘serious disruption’

• A broadening of the definition of ‘serious disruption’ to allow police to outlaw a wider range of protests

• New powers to allow businesses to sue protest groups for disruption

• Allowing police to make protest groups pay for the policing of their own protests

• Powers to impose exclusion zones around ‘places vital to the functioning of democratic governance’ in order to protect them from ‘unreasonable protest activity’

• Giving officers the power to ban or limit the frequency of protests on the grounds of cost, effectively outlawing the current regular Palestinian solidarity protests

Walney’s proposals are particularly striking, coming as they did within hours of the High Court finding that the Government’s previous attempts to crackdown on the right to protest were unlawful.

The timing is highly unlikely to be a coincidence and suggests that rather than row back from his draconian and unlawful agenda, Sunak intends to simply double down.

Here’s why this should alarm us all.