Dear friends,
At the moment the Serious Organised Crime & Police Bill is in Committee Stage in the House of Lords and will probably be debated and
amended on the 5th April. The clauses on the right to protest in and around
Parliament Square may be discussed on that day or at a later date - it's not
possible to find out just yet.
The Global Women's Strike will call a demonstration in Parliament Square on the day the clauses are back in the Lords and we will let you know
exactly what is happening by email on Monday 4th April.
The issue was debated in the House of Lords on the 14th March, and a number of Peers spoke against it. We had confirmation from a number of
sources that the Bill could fall if there is enough opposition.
It would be very useful if people can contact as many Peers as possible urging them to vote against these clauses (see how to do this
below).
Hope you had a good bank holiday weekend, and keep in touch.
Yours for the right to protest in Parliament Square!
Kay Chapman
Community Picket & Speak Out
We Will Not Give Up
Our Hard Won Rights!
Defend the Right to Protest in Parliament Square
From house arrest and imprisonment without trial to banning the right to protest, the government is working overtime to roll back rights
established over centuries. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill will
criminalise peaceful protest anywhere the government chooses, and, most particularly in and around Parliament Square, where protesters name and
shame those who make life and death decisions on our behalf.
Anti-war protest is its first target. Brian Haw’s visually impressive three-and-a-half-year, 24-hour-a-day, peace presence. And the two-year
weekly Community Speakout of the Global Women’s Strike which has given a
voice to many who cannot stay silent in the face of mass killing in Iraq or
elsewhere.
The government wants to deny Mr Haw’s precedent-setting court victory under the Human Rights Act (Mr Justice Gray’s judgement, 4 October 2002),
which established everyone’s right to protest.
The bill would:
· permit the home secretary to ban demonstrations in places designated by himself, "in the interests of national security.”
· ban any spontaneous protest – even of one person – outside Parliament or within one kilometre (including Whitehall and Trafalgar
Square), and allow the police to refuse even a planned protest, e.g for disrupting the ”life of the community” in the traffic island that is
Parliament Square!
· compel demonstrators to give at least six days notice to the Commissioner of Police who would have powers to impose conditions (and
change them at will) on a demonstration, dictating place, start and end times, number of people, number and size of banners, and noise levels.
Loudspeakers are forbidden under pain of a £5000 fine.
· give police the power to arrest people giving out two or more leaflets, or for demonstrating in a residential area.
Even though there has been less media coverage of the right to protest than the anti-terror measures the two are inextricably linked. It’s no
surprise that a government, which is bullying through Parliament anti-terror
legislation which would remove the right to habeas corpus and open trial by
a jury and detain people on the basis of evidence extracted by torture, also
wants to remove any visible expression of dissent.
Opposition to the banning of the right to protest is growing. Legal Action for Women’s 18 Jan briefing in the Commons was packed. The Community
Speakout, jointly with Brian Haw and 30 organisations, held demonstrations
on 7 February while the Bill was in the Commons, and again on 14 March when
in the Lords. A number of MPs from all parties raised serious concerns --
86 MPs voted against the Bill.
Despite the government’s guillotine of discussion on this contentious bill, protesters, MPs and Lords feel that the ban can and must be defeated.
If we can stir up enough opposition the government will run out of time & the Bill will fall before the election.
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