Protesting not ‘un-British’, says Stonewall founder in plea against crackdown

Protesting and counter-protesting is not “un-British”, a Stonewall founder has warned, as he urged the Government to “get the equation right” on balancing public freedoms and protections.

Lord Michael Cashman appeared to object to the phrase used by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, when she voiced concerns about seeing pro-Palestine and anti-war demonstrations after the attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Manchester earlier this month.

Speaking in the Lords, the non-affiliated peer and LGBT+ charity co-founder said: “The right to protest is an essential freedom.

“Protests often offend and often discomfort, and that is a price I believe worth paying in a democracy.

“And to counter-protest is not un-British. It is how protests are undertaken and conducted that matters.”

Lord Cashman said he had “deep concerns” with how the Crime and Policing Bill could look, by the time it clears Parliament.

Former Liberty director and Labour peer Baroness Chakrabarti said she had “concerns about our existing public order statute book, measures proposed in this Bill, and those trailed as likely new Government amendments to come at committee to restrict cumulative protest”.

She said: “Protests against asylum hotels make me very anxious but I would no more ban them than those against job losses, benefit cuts, environmental degradation, war crimes, or racism and antisemitism.

“What would blanket bans on face coverings at protests mean for dissidents outside the embassy of an authoritarian foreign power?”

Baroness Chakrabarti added: “We must never write, let alone legislate for, a blank cheque for potential future anti-democratic abuse.”

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Strasburger, Big Brother Watch chairman, said the UK had been an “exemplar” on peaceful protest, but extensive constraints had been put in place, warning the Bill could stop demonstrations outside the Palace of Westminster.

“Now it seems the Government wants even more powers to restrict protests,” he warned.

Lord Strasburger said a proposed restriction on processions outside places of worship “would certainly include Parliament Square”, which is flanked by Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, “and most urban centres”.

He added: “Furthermore, the Government is promising additional clauses to enable the police to ban repeating process protests, which is, of course, most protests.”

Home Office minister Lord Hanson of Flint defended the Government’s position.

He said: “The principle of this is that we are trying to ensure that we do have freedom of speech, we do have the right to protest, but we also have the right to ensure that protest is managed in an effective way, and that there are responsibilities in protest as well as the right to protest.

Ms Mahmood previously criticised pro-Palestine protesters, saying she “would have wanted those individuals to just take a step back” in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack in Manchester.

“I think that behaviour is fundamentally un-British,” she said.

The Home Secretary later said that repeated protests had caused “considerable fear” for the Jewish community.

And the Government unveiled its intention to amend Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, to allow the police to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests on local areas in order to impose conditions on public processions and assemblies.