What If They Held A Protest and Nobody Came?

No world event has affected me to the same extent that coronavirus has. The same goes for the vast majority of people on the planet. Even hugely significant events like 9/11, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, or Chernobyl directly affected relatively few people, albeit that they affected them more profoundly than most of us can ever imagine.

Even Brexit, possibly the most significant political and economic event of our lifetime, will not directly affect most people in the UK on a day-to-day basis. Cheese exporters, fishermen, and many businesses in Northern Ireland will live with the consequences every day, however, and there will be people whose lives will be fundamentally changed by Brexit, some maybe for the better, some maybe for the worse.

The rest of us may notice subtle differences if or when we next travel abroad and there may be other relatively inconsequential changes, but the opinion that you or I hold about how beneficial or detrimental Brexit has been and will continue to be to the nation as a whole will be shaped not by direct experience, but from what we see in the media, from our own research, and yes, from our prejudices.

Similarly, The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which passed in the Commons by 359 votes to 263 on Monday 16^th March, is very unlikely to impinge on my life, your life, or indeed the lives of an overwhelming majority of the country, yet it has provoked more debate and controversy than many other bills proposed in recent years.

Critics of the bill have been asked how they can oppose a bill that proposes longer sentences for violent offenders? That question misses the point on two fronts. It is entirely possible to support some provisions of the bill - such as stiffer sentences – without supporting all of it (and of course it is one other, very particular aspect of the bill that is the major focus for opposition), and even then, longer sentences are of themselves of limited value given the other very significant failings within the criminal justice system.

There are now more than 56,000 cases awaiting trial in Crown Courts, and while coronavirus is responsible for some of the backlog, the majority of the delays and backlogs have been caused by historic underfunding and cut-backs. In March 2020 - so before coronavirus had an impact -  there were over 40,000 outstanding cases. Some of those cases relate to offences committed in 2018 or earlier, and some of these are unlikely to come to trial before 2022. Justice delayed is justice denied, as the saying goes, and many of these cases will eventually be dropped for a whole host of reasons. There is little benefit in increased sentences if there is little chance of a trial even taking place, let alone there being a conviction.

Banging on about longer sentences, putting the fear of God into criminals, and being tough on crime is a common political rallying cry, and there’s little doubt that it is popular with a significant section of the electorate, particularly those whose hackles are raised by stories in the Daily Mail and other tabloids about legal aid, lenient sentencing, and ‘liberal-elite’ judges. If you are open to an alternative view, may I recommend following The Secret Barrister on Twitter, or reading one or both of their books.[1]

Setting longer sentences aside, the most significant clauses of The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill relate to causing a public nuisance, particularly as it affects the rights of ordinary members of the public to take part in demonstrations and protests.

As someone who has never taken part in a protest march or demonstration (and I think it very unlikely that I will ever be sufficiently provoked or exercised to consider doing so in the future), the chances of this impacting me are slim to non-existent. The same probably goes for 99% of the UK’s population. 

No doubt you will remember the protests by Extinction Rebellion in London in September 2020, and the Black Lives Matters (BLM) demonstrations in June 2020. Those who righteously condemned the vandalism of statues - the daubing of graffiti on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill, and the dumping of Edward Colston’s statue into Bristol Harbour, for instance - will undoubtedly support the proposed stiffer sentences for such vandalism and the proposed restrictions that may be placed on demonstrations and protests in the future.

You may disagree with Extinction Rebellion’s cause, you may disagree with the BLM movement, or you may agree with their motives, but not their methods. In either case, you will probably support The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Equally, as draconian as the bill’s provisions appear – it would be an offence to cause someone ‘serious annoyance,’ or merely put them at risk of being caused serious annoyance - you may suspect that in practice, little will change, and that very few demonstrations or protests will be affected. On that score, only time will tell.

‘Risk of serious annoyance’ is a pretty low bar however, and as Theresa May said during the debate on the bill, “It’s tempting to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable because we all think we’re reasonable. But actually, future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”

A reasonable Home Secretary?

Many people feel that it would be entirely reasonable that protests and demonstrations like those of Extinction Rebellion and BLM last year are banned, and there’s little doubt that both caused inconvenience and annoyance to some people, but that is actually the way in which protests usually work. As others have pointed out, the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and former Home Secretary and Prime Minister Theresa May might not have been able to vote, let alone stand for Parliament and sit as MPs had these restrictions been in place during the early 20^th century when the suffragettes successfully earned votes for women, since there is little doubt that their methods caused some annoyance.

Last year's Extinction Rebellion protest on Westminster Bridge...

...next year's protest.

Anyone who thinks that it is reasonable to ban protests on the grounds that just one person suffers serious annoyance, or is put at risk of suffering serious annoyance, should remember that this will not be limited to protests that they don’t support. Imagine, as implausible as it may seem right now,  if a future government announced plans to rejoin the EU, or to build a nuclear power plant at the end of your garden, or introduce swingeing taxes on private pensions, or privatise the National Health Service. Now imagine that no one could protest about it; what if they gave a protest and nobody came?

It isn’t too much of a stretch for a future Home Secretary to use risk of serious annoyance to even impose a ban on a rally by an opposition political party, fringe or mainstream. But that couldn’t happen here, could it?

---

[1] The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken, and Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies