Anti-protest bill leads to wrongful arrests
The new Public Order Act was used by the Metropolitan Police to arrest six protestors on Coronation Day, despite the group having liaised with police before the event, says Zoe Crowther on Politics Home. The six demonstrators from the Republic campaign group, which included leader Graham Smith, were released without charge, with the Met expressing “regret” for the arrests. On Saturday there were 64 arrests under the act, which passed into law just days earlier despite “criticism from experts, liberty groups and opposition MPs”.
The six were arrested under the new act on suspicion of intention to “lock on”, although the “equipment” turned out to be luggage straps for gathering placards, says Owen Jones in The Guardian. This offers an “instructive lesson about how freedom is lost”.
History shows that an “infinitely greater threat is posed by unrestrained state power than by excessive disruption caused by peaceful protest”. Rishi Sunak has ruled out a rethink of the act and Keir Starmer says he will allow it to “bed in” and won’t commit to repealing it. We must realise the gravity of this crisis and “demand an automatic presumption in favour of peaceful protest”.
There are big problems with the act, but there are also two further layers to this story, says Stephen Bush in the Financial Times: operational failures on the part of the Met and other long-running issues with the service. The six arrests of the Republic protestors were made because one part of the Met failed to talk to another part. A single phone call “should have resolved the issue in minutes”.
Even more bafflingly, the police also arrested three members of Westminister City Council's night safety team who were handing out rape alarms the previous evening, apparently in the belief that they were plotting to disturb the coronation. The new act “dangerously limits the right to protest” – but the Met also urgently needs reform.