Public Order Bill: Britain to get tougher on disruptive protests, activists fear new powers
- UK government eyes harsher sentences and new criminal offences for some types of protests
- Activist group in Britain is warning of ‘deeply authoritarian powers’ in the hands of authorities
Activists and a journalists association in Britain are warning that proposed public order laws could give the UK government and police greater powers to restrict protests and media freedoms.
Britain’s government insists it is not anti-protest, and that it has public backing to introduce tougher measures and new criminal offences against a “small minority” of protesters who use “guerilla” tactics to block roads, transport and other infrastructures.
The Public Order Bill, which is now being studied in the UK parliament’s House of Lords, gives police a raft of new powers to deal with protesters in England and Wales, such as those from Just Stop Oil.
These include the authority to stop and search anyone they suspect of intending to take part in a disruptive protest, and to lock down entire areas should one occur.
Courts will also be able to serve demonstrators with new “Serious Disruption Prevention Orders” (SDPO), similar those used for common criminals whereby a subject can be electronically tagged, even if they have not committed an offence.
Campaigners say the SDPO would also prevent subjects from associating with named people.
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“Under new measures set out in the bill, the police will be able stop and search people in protest settings or place activists under 24-hour surveillance, even when they have not committed any crime,” said Mark Johnson, a legal and policy officer with Big Brother Watch, a civil rights and privacy campaign group.
“These are deeply authoritarian powers that should have no place in a liberal democracy and only diminish the UK’s standing internationally when it comes to upholding human rights.”
The UK government proposes jail terms and fines for some offences. “Locking on”, for example, could mean six months’ imprisonment.
Given the propensity of some climate protesters to lock themselves to bridges and railings to make it difficult for the police to move them, campaigners against the bill say there is a risk someone could be arrested for simply carrying a bicycle lock or a tube of super glue.
Creating a tunnel – or being present in such a tunnel – under a public road or other transport network could lead to a three-year jail term.
First introduced by the former Home Secretary Priti Patel, the Public Order Bill has already made its way through the House of Commons and would likely become law.
“I’ll tell you what, those Chinese in their embassy will be watching this very closely at the moment,” Conservative MP Charles Walker, who is opposed to the bill, told parliament last month.
The British bill comes amid a wave of disruptive stunts by Just Stop Oil climate activists.
The bill also comes amid what some see as a growing climate of repression in the UK.
These are deeply authoritarian powers that should have no place in a liberal democracy
During a Just Stop Oil motorway protest last week, police in Hertfordshire, north of London, detained LBC radio journalist Charlotte Lynch as well as a photographer and a documentary maker as they covered it.
Lynch, who was put in a cell, said she had been nowhere near the protesters when stopped by police and arrested after she said she found out about the protest on social media.
“They mustn’t have even spoken to me for two minutes,” Lynch told her radio station about the police. “Handcuffs were banged onto first, my left hand, and I went to grab my phone with my right hand, which they immediately snatched away and I was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance.”
Lynch was taken to a police station where she was searched, and her equipment seized. She was released seven hours later.
Hertfordshire police later said “in retrospect an arrest would not have been necessary”, but have not issued an apology to Lynch.
“The Public Order Bill is sadly one of several legislative threats to journalists being introduced by the UK government,” Séamus Dooley, National Union of Journalists (NUJ) assistant general secretary said in a statement.
“Last week’s arrests at the Just Stop Oil protests were shocking and risk becoming commonplace if protest restrictions are brought forward through the Public Order Bill.
“Journalists should be free to carry out their work without threat of arrest, yet recent incidents combined with plans under the National Security Bill, pose a significant threat to press freedom.”
Dooley was referring to a second bill currently going through parliament that campaigners say, unless changed, could pose a direct threat to investigative journalists and foreign media working in the UK.
The bill, which includes Scotland, is intended to cover acts of espionage damaging to UK national security interests by individuals acting on behalf of foreign states. The bill proposes a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for espionage, and 14 years imprisonment for foreign interference.
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“There should be no situation in which journalists’ risk being classed as spies or traitors,” the submission read. “This perception, reinforced by this bill, risks legitimising threats made against journalists and media workers and undermining public support for a free media.”
Campaigners have requested a meeting with the security minister Tom Tugendhat, who is also one of the UK’s most outspoken critics of alleged human rights abuses in China.
