Shrinking Campaign Space By Law

Hilder (2007) reminds us that Charles Tilly (2004) says that “numbers – the scale of …support”  is an important aspect of campaigning. Large numbers influence decison makers, attract supporters and confirm the credibility of issue at hand, particularly when they are peaceful marches, assemblies and-or public space occupations rather than ‘media stunts’. Baringhorst 2009 tells us that protests are a key tactic in many campaigns to generate change.

Protests in the 21st Century, UK,

now have to negotiate a variety of laws

that did not exist prior to 1980.

One way for the establishment to ensure that the power of protest yields no great change is to ensure that the protest remains small. One way of doing that is to ensure that the space it is allowed to be in is small.

The following acts are there for the police to control violent mobs, riots and terrorism and yet they are used on peaceful, non violent public assemblies to confine and-or disperse them and to criminalise the participants:

Public Order Act 1986 Section 12 and Section 14,

the Highway Act 1980 Section 137,

the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 Section 1 + 142-148,

the Criminal And Public Order Act 1994 Section 60 & 60aa & 61

the Public Reform Act 2002 Section 50

the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 Section 35,

the police technique of kettling (made legal in two common law cases) and

the police technique of dividing protests by ‘cordoning off areas’ (Terrorist Act 2000) or simply making human police barriers through a protest,

Paul Ridge from Bindmans, interviewed for the Occupy London film says ”

“It does concern me ..when what are legitimate lawful proper protests are clamped down on. The police should be neutral in this process. They are not there to simply deny the right to protest. … They are there to uphold the law and protest is lawful. …so it does concern me that the police can misunderstand their role and to be frank abuse their power..”

The criticism for this kind of policing of protest is widely spread even within their own ranks.

“We reported in Adapting to Protest that it had become clear that a number of police forces in England and Wales approach peaceful protest in terms of “is the protest lawful or unlawful?” This is an incorrect starting point. The concept of ‘unlawful protest’ is inaccurate as a matter of law. First, the right guaranteed by ECHR Article 11 is the right to “peaceful assembly”, not “lawful assembly”. Second, there is no legal basis in domestic law for describing a public protest as inherently unlawful” (Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, 2009)

This abuse of police power diminishes the potential of a protest to grow by confining it in as small a space as it can so as to hinder it from being  1) more effective and 2) harder to control. That is what most of the above laws effectively do.

“The social psychological answer to the question as to why some people become mobilized while others do not is efficacy” (Stekelenburg & Klandermans 2010 pg 3). I suggest that such policing has had the knock on effect of stopping people from even coming to a protest because in general the efficacy of protest is diminishing due to the disruptive response of police tactics in regards to protest and the fervent gathering of IDs that is feels like bullying when experienced.
The police seem to have all but forgotten that protesters are members of the same public that it is their job to serve. The police often justify the implementation of the described laws and techniques as ‘the facilitation of protest’. However ‘facilitation’ is not a synonym of  ‘diminish’, ‘disperse’, ‘surround’,‘ kettle’, ‘bully’,’obstruct’, ‘hinder’ and ‘isolate’ all of which the police do when they claim to be ‘facilitating’. I suspect that the driving motivation behind their blunted, counter-intuitive concept of ‘facilitation’ is one of pure project management of their own work load. The bigger the protest the more ‘facilitation’ they would need to do so they thoughtlessly and selfishly keep it small.

Laws that ostensibly are there to protect and serve the public are being used to cripple the political power of the public.  It is insincere of the police to fiegn facilitation of anything other than their own work load. The work of NETPOL and Green and Black highlights that the UK policing of protest is interfering with the democratic process that historically has led to progressive changes that have enhanced the lives of many. The police are doing so with impunity most likely because it suits the established power paradigm of UK society that any protest is diminished before its voice is really heard.

References

Baringhorst, S. (2009). Political Campaigning in Changing Media Cultures. In S. Baringhorst, J. Nieysto, & V. Kneip, Political Campaigning on the Web (pp. 9-31). Siegen: Media Upheavals.

Green And Black Cross. (2015, February 2). Laws Commonly Used in Protest. Retrieved December 1, 2016, from Green and Black Cross.org: https://greenandblackcross.org/guides/laws/

Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary. (2009). Adapting to Protest – Nurturing the British Model of Policing. London: Central Office of Information.

Paul Hilder, J. C.-G. (2007). CONTENTIOUS CITIZENS CIVIL SOCIETY’S ROLE IN CAMPAIGNING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE. The Young Foundation.

Stekelenburg, J. V., & Klandermans, B. (2010). The social psychology of protest. Sociopedia .